Shane Su­perville

Se­nior Re­porter

shane.su­perville@guardian.co.tt

Of­fi­cers in tac­ti­cal units of the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice (TTPS) are com­plain­ing that some of the bul­let­proof vests is­sued to them are well over the pre­scribed “shelf life” for use. Sev­er­al of­fi­cers from dif­fer­ent di­vi­sion­al task force units raised con­cerns over the qual­i­ty of equip­ment giv­en to them.

The of­fi­cers are now forced to buy ac­ces­sories for them­selves, us­ing mon­ey from their own pock­ets, as they un­der­stand the im­por­tance of prop­er body ar­mour to pro­tect them­selves giv­en the cal­i­bre of weapons used by crim­i­nals in re­cent at­tacks.

Bul­let­proof vests from the Sa­far­i­land and US Ar­mor brands are usu­al­ly is­sued to of­fi­cers af­ter pass­ing out from the acad­e­my and typ­i­cal­ly have a shelf life of five to ten years, af­ter which the ma­te­ri­als start de­grad­ing ren­der­ing it more in­ef­fec­tive with each pass­ing year.

The con­cerns were al­so raised by the pres­i­dent of the Es­tate Po­lice As­so­ci­a­tion (EPA) Deryck Richard­son in 2022, when he called on se­cu­ri­ty guards to re­port com­pa­nies who is­sued ex­pired body ar­mour to them.

Re­spond­ing to Guardian Me­dia’s ques­tions via email on Wednes­day af­ter­noon, DCP in charge of Op­er­a­tions Ju­nior Ben­jamin said the TTPS con­tin­ues to pri­ori­tise the safe­ty and well-be­ing of of­fi­cers. Ben­jamin, how­ev­er, did not re­spond to ques­tions on the age of some of the vests in use but said the po­lice ser­vice recog­nised the dan­gers of­fi­cers faced while on du­ty and are work­ing to­wards get­ting the best qual­i­ty of equip­ment.

“The pro­cure­ment of tools and equip­ment for the use by po­lice of­fi­cers is an on­go­ing process in the TTPS, and we abide by strict le­gal guide­lines which out­line the process we should fol­low. (Pub­lic Pro­cure­ment and Dis­pos­al of Pub­lic Prop­er­ty Act, 2015),” Ben­jamin said.

“In­her­ent in the process of procur­ing equip­ment for use by mem­bers of the or­gan­i­sa­tion, pru­dence dic­tates that due dili­gence should be ex­er­cised in mak­ing the best pos­si­ble choic­es, keep­ing in mind the wel­fare of of­fi­cers at all times.”

Ben­jamin al­so stressed the TTPS’ com­mit­ment to equip­ping and train­ing of­fi­cers to of­fer them the best pos­si­bil­i­ty of sur­vival.

“The pri­ori­tis­ing of of­fi­cers’ safe­ty sends a clear mes­sage to the pub­lic that the or­gan­i­sa­tion un­der­stands the risks in­volved in polic­ing and our re­spon­si­bil­i­ties where this is con­cerned. As such, we go the dis­tance in pro­tect­ing mem­bers of the pub­lic as well. Our fo­cus at all times is to en­sure that our of­fi­cers are phys­i­cal­ly and men­tal­ly pre­pared and pro­vid­ed with the nec­es­sary tools and equip­ment to dis­charge their func­tions.”

An of­fi­cer in the cor­po­rate com­mu­ni­ca­tions unit dis­closed that the TTPS was un­able to pro­vide any ad­di­tion­al re­sponse giv­en the po­ten­tial se­cu­ri­ty risks in­volved.

Cops buy­ing their own body ar­mour, hol­sters

One po­lice­man as­signed to a Task Force in North­ern Trinidad said of­fi­cers were al­ready aware of the threats against them and took mat­ters in­to their own hands by pur­chas­ing their own body ar­mour.

The source said a Lev­el II qual­i­ty vest which would of­fer pro­tec­tion against pis­tol and re­volver cal­i­bre am­mu­ni­tion cost rough­ly $5,000 at a lo­cal tac­ti­cal re­tail store. He said while it is cost­ly, he felt it was the safer op­tion as vests were usu­al­ly not avail­able at the TTPS sup­ply store.

Of the 16 cops on the team, he said, on­ly four have body ar­mour pro­vid­ed by the TTPS; the oth­er mem­bers paid cash for their gear. The oth­ers are get­ting by with­out it.

“We have a batch who passed out in 2020 and still haven’t been is­sued a bul­let­proof vest from the TTPS. There are a few of­fi­cers I know who worked as Spe­cial Re­serve Po­lice (SRP) con­sta­bles be­fore be­ing reg­u­larised and are still us­ing those vests be­cause they haven’t got­ten any fresh body ar­mour.”

An of­fi­cer from an­oth­er unit said cops were some­times giv­en “sec­ond-hand” bul­let­proof vests when col­leagues are sus­pend­ed or re­tired.

He said while it was not ide­al, some of­fi­cers took the equip­ment as it of­fered some means of pro­tec­tion.

‘Some of­fi­cers claim­ing to have vests from the ear­ly 2000s’

Speak­ing with Guardian Me­dia on Thurs­day, firearms sub­ject-mat­ter ex­pert Paul Na­hous said chal­lenges of hav­ing ad­e­quate, ef­fec­tive body ar­mour was not new as sev­er­al of­fi­cers have al­so shared their frus­tra­tion with him and con­cerns over the need to prop­er­ly equip po­lice giv­en the fre­quent use of high-pow­ered as­sault ri­fles in gang ac­tiv­i­ty.

“It’s years now this has been go­ing on, some of­fi­cers are claim­ing they have vests from the ear­ly 2000s in their ca­reer, and the vests have passed their war­ran­ty date, and they haven’t been re­placed.”

Na­hous not­ed that while a pe­ri­od of five years was of­ten the pe­ri­od giv­en for a vest’s op­ti­mal use, there was a brief pe­ri­od af­ter this where it could still of­fer good qual­i­ty pro­tec­tion.

He added that a “good qual­i­ty” vest would even last for longer pe­ri­ods once they are stored and han­dled with care. “A lot of man­u­fac­tur­ers tend to put a war­ran­ty on a vest of five years or so, it doesn’t mean af­ter five years it’s not ef­fec­tive, it just means that af­ter that time that’s when they will guar­an­tee it will work 100 per cent how they in­tend­ed it to work, af­ter that it de­grades lit­tle by lit­tle.”

Some peo­ple have a vest for ten years, and it works per­fect­ly fine even though it’s passed the war­ran­ty date.

“Sweat­ing, mov­ing it around, toss­ing it around, the tem­per­a­ture where it’s stored, all those things will cause it to de­grade quick­er.” Na­hous worked at the of­fice of for­mer com­mis­sion­er of po­lice Gary Grif­fith as a sub­ject-mat­ter ex­pert for firearms train­ing and tech­nol­o­gy.

Po­lice As­so­ci­a­tion: Ef­forts un­der­way to get more vests

Con­tact­ed for com­ment on Tues­day, head of the TTPS So­cial Wel­fare As­so­ci­a­tion ASP Gideon Dick­son said while the con­cern was not brought to his at­ten­tion, it is a pri­or­i­ty for of­fi­cers to be prop­er­ly equipped.

De­scrib­ing bul­let­proof vests as an “es­sen­tial tool of the trade” in polic­ing, Dick­son said DCP Ben­jamin was work­ing to­wards get­ting more body ar­mour for of­fi­cers, adding that the test­ing of these vests was un­der­way.

“They (the TTPS) are al­so sched­ul­ing bal­lis­tic test­ing for some of the vests they get so noth­ing is fi­nal as yet, but ef­forts are be­ing made to ac­quire bul­let­proof vests en masse, so of­fi­cers would be prop­er­ly out­fit­ted to go out and if need be, if they en­gage any­one with heavy fire they will be suf­fi­cient­ly pro­tect­ed.

“We can­not be in a po­si­tion where the crim­i­nals out-arm the po­lice.”

Dick­son added that of­fi­cers should be able to sur­vive dan­ger­ous con­fronta­tions with ad­e­quate equip­ment and skills train­ing. He could not con­firm whether of­fi­cers were re­im­bursed for pur­chas­ing equip­ment with their own mon­ey as he was un­cer­tain if there was a pol­i­cy in place for that.