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Thursday, July 10, 2025

CoP to let off-duty frontline officers go home with guns

by

Anna-Lisa Paul
12 days ago
20250628
Police Commissioner Allister Guevarro

Police Commissioner Allister Guevarro

KERWIN PIERRE

Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice (CoP) Al­lis­ter Gue­var­ro has moved to al­low se­lect off-du­ty of­fi­cers to car­ry their firearms home. He un­veiled this yes­ter­day among new pol­i­cy de­ci­sions aimed at en­sur­ing the safe­ty of of­fi­cers and en­hanc­ing the op­er­a­tional ca­pac­i­ty of the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice (TTPS).

Speak­ing dur­ing his ap­pear­ance on the TTPS’ flag­ship tele­vi­sion pro­gramme Be­yond the Tape, Gue­var­ro said he will al­so be mov­ing to en­ter­tain Firearm Users Li­cence (FUL) ap­pli­ca­tions not more than six months old.

Gue­var­ro said, “I can’t be arm­ing the mem­bers of the pub­lic and not be treat­ing with my own of­fi­cers.”

He as­sured law en­force­ment agents, “You have not been left be­hind.”

Say­ing he had vis­it­ed the TTPS Ar­moury on Thurs­day and asked for an au­dit of all the idle and ser­vice­able pis­tols, the CoP said, “It is my in­ten­tion to in­sti­tute an off-du­ty firearm pol­i­cy where I will be arm­ing all of my front­line, tac­ti­cal and op­er­a­tional of­fi­cers.

“So that in the past, even af­ter they treat with a crim­i­nal, they would have had to sign off their weapons...well let me tell you, my of­fi­cers will not have to sign off their guns again.”

He said he al­so said he would ad­dress all FULs ap­plied for with­in the last six months.

“So, if you have an ap­pli­ca­tion and it is not gone past six months, I will en­ter­tain that ap­pli­ca­tion for a de­ci­sion,” he said.

The six-month time frame, he ex­plained, will en­sure that the sup­port­ing doc­u­ments, such as the Cer­tifi­cate of Char­ac­ter (CoC), will still be valid when the ap­pli­ca­tion comes up for re­view.

He stat­ed, “One of the cri­te­ria for get­ting a FUL is a cer­tifi­cate of good char­ac­ter, and that is on­ly valid for six months. So hav­ing an in­valid cer­tifi­cate of char­ac­ter...you can’t move for­ward.”

Oth­er valid doc­u­ments which must ac­com­pa­ny FUL ap­pli­ca­tions in­clude a med­ical cer­tifi­cate, a psy­cho­me­t­ric eval­u­a­tion and let­ters from spous­es.

The CoP stressed the doc­u­ments must be up­dat­ed to re­flect the cur­rent cir­cum­stances of ap­pli­cants, which could have changed since the FUL ap­pli­ca­tion had been sub­mit­ted.

He urged, “A lot can change in half a year, so we need to get that up­dat­ed.”

With over 55,000 FUL ap­pli­ca­tions await­ing de­ci­sions, the Firearm Unit has been in­struct­ed to re­turn out­dat­ed ap­pli­ca­tions to di­vi­sion­al of­fices so they can be up­dat­ed, he said.

Gue­var­ro has promised that ad­ver­tise­ments will be pub­lished in the me­dia out­lin­ing the full list of re­quire­ments to com­plete the process.

On the is­sue of pep­per spray per­mits, he ad­mit­ted, “We have is­sued 225 pep­per spray per­mits to date and we have ap­prox­i­mate­ly 800 pend­ing ap­pli­ca­tions.”


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