Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice (CoP) Al­lis­ter Gue­var­ro yes­ter­day met with ju­di­cial of­fi­cers at the Hall of Jus­tice, Port-of-Spain, to dis­cuss what he re­ferred to as “se­cu­ri­ty con­cerns.”

Gue­var­ro left the court at Knox Street, Port-of-Spain, around 11 am, ac­com­pa­nied by se­nior po­lice of­fi­cers, but de­clined to elab­o­rate on what tran­spired in the meet­ing and who he had met with.

Con­tact­ed on the mat­ter lat­er on, how­ev­er, Gue­var­ro re­spond­ed in a voice note say­ing, “I can con­firm I was at the High Court this morn­ing for the pur­pos­es of ad­dress­ing spe­cif­ic se­cu­ri­ty con­cerns.”

He added, “How­ev­er, I will not be able to di­vulge the na­ture of the vis­it nor the per­sons that I would have met with.”

Spec­u­la­tion is rife that Gue­var­ro’s meet­ing was re­lat­ed to the pol­i­cy di­rec­tive ban­ning po­lice of­fi­cers from tak­ing their firearms in­to court.

A mael­strom erupt­ed on No­vem­ber 6, 2024, af­ter a po­lice of­fi­cer and a court em­ploy­ee clashed at the O’Meara Ju­di­cial Com­plex, when the of­fi­cer re­port­ed­ly re­fused to com­ply with the weapon rule and was re­fused en­try. Of­fi­cial ju­di­cial pol­i­cy states that court users, in­clud­ing po­lice of­fi­cers, are pro­hib­it­ed from en­ter­ing the court premis­es with a firearm.

The Ju­di­cia­ry de­fend­ed the decade-old pol­i­cy last year, as it claimed it was in line with in­ter­na­tion­al best prac­tice.

At the time, it re­in­forced, “The Ju­di­cia­ry es­tab­lished a screen­ing pol­i­cy in Ju­ly 2015, which is in keep­ing with in­ter­na­tion­al best prac­tice for court build­ings and is in keep­ing with se­cu­ri­ty pro­to­cols in many sec­tors across TT and in­ter­na­tion­al­ly where po­lice of­fi­cers must al­so be screened.”

The Ju­di­cia­ry said this po­si­tion had been for­mal­ly com­mu­ni­cat­ed to var­i­ous stake­hold­ers, in­clud­ing the Law As­so­ci­a­tion (LATT) and every CoP who had been in of­fice since the pol­i­cy’s im­ple­men­ta­tion. It claimed a col­lab­o­ra­tive ap­proach was usu­al­ly tak­en when spe­cial mea­sures were re­quired, as it un­der­stood the im­por­tant role played by of­fi­cers of the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice (TTPS) in pro­vid­ing pub­lic safe­ty and se­cu­ri­ty - but still re­served the right to reg­u­late ac­cess to all court premis­es.

Trinidad and To­ba­go Po­lice Ser­vice So­cial and Wel­fare As­so­ci­a­tion (TTPSS­WA) pres­i­dent Gideon Dick­son came out fight­ing for of­fi­cers then, as he op­posed the en­force­ment of the di­rec­tive at the time, say­ing they would not put down their guns when go­ing to court de­spite calls from the TTPS lead­er­ship to do so. Dick­son fur­ther ad­vised that of­fi­cers would not be go­ing to court if they had to put down their guns.

How­ev­er, for­mer act­ing CoP Ju­nior Ben­jamin, in his ca­pac­i­ty then as Deputy Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice (DCP) Op­er­a­tions, ad­vised of­fi­cers to abide by the ju­di­cial pol­i­cy.