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Friday, February 28, 2025

Crackdown on dark tint

Hinds, CoP say it will help in crime fight

by

Jesse Ramdeo
213 days ago
20240730
Transport Commissioner Clive Clarke, left, and Junior Minister in the Ministry of Works and Infrastructure Richie Sookhai show off the electronic device which will be used to monitor windscreens yesterday.

Transport Commissioner Clive Clarke, left, and Junior Minister in the Ministry of Works and Infrastructure Richie Sookhai show off the electronic device which will be used to monitor windscreens yesterday.

ABRAHAM DIAZ

Se­nior Re­porter

jesse.ramdeo@cnc3.co.tt 

Mo­torists are be­ing warned that the Li­cens­ing Au­thor­i­ty is gear­ing up to en­force the Mo­tor Ve­hi­cles and Road Traf­fic (wind­screen and win­dow tint) reg­u­la­tions 2020 as part of the Min­istry of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty’s fight against the crim­i­nal el­e­ment.

The law car­ries fines of up to $2,000 and de­mer­it points and law en­force­ment will be us­ing new hand­held de­vices to de­tect in­frac­tions.

Dur­ing its of­fi­cial launch and op­er­a­tional­i­sa­tion at the min­istry’s Port-of-Spain of­fices yes­ter­day, Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Fitzger­ald Hinds un­der­scored that the law, which was amend­ed in 2017, is aimed at bol­ster­ing road safe­ty and se­cu­ri­ty and not­ed the role of heav­i­ly tint­ed ve­hi­cles in crim­i­nal ac­tiv­i­ty.

“There has, in fact, de­vel­oped in Trinidad and To­ba­go, the use and abuse of heav­i­ly tint­ed ve­hi­cles, very many cas­es link­ing them to crim­i­nal at­tacks on busi­ness­es and in­di­vid­u­als,” Hinds said, as he ex­plained heav­i­ly tint­ed glass pos­es ma­jor chal­lenges for law en­force­ment in de­tect­ing weapons, crim­i­nal con­duct and con­tra­band.

“Whether the crime is mur­der and they are mov­ing to or away from the scene, kid­nap­pings, gun traf­fick­ing, home in­va­sions, drug traf­fick­ing, they all use the roads and these mea­sures to take bet­ter hand and con­trol of what is hap­pen­ing on the roads are very, very im­por­tant to us.”

Full-scale en­force­ment of the law, which will see the use of de­vices to mea­sure win­dow and wind­screen tint, is ex­pect­ed to take place in six weeks, ac­cord­ing to Works and Trans­port Min­is­ter Ro­han Sinanan, who said Gov­ern­ment will em­bark on an ed­u­ca­tion­al dri­ve on the law. He said the coun­try was ex­pe­ri­enc­ing “chal­leng­ing times” and there were peo­ple who were tak­ing ad­van­tage of the lev­els of tint per­mis­si­ble in T&T.

“The law is the law and en­force­ment agen­cies are en­ti­tled to car­ry out the law, but from both the Min­istry of Works and Trans­port and the Min­istry of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty, we are go­ing on a cam­paign for those who would want to say I didn’t know, to elim­i­nate that part of the ex­cus­es.”

He main­tained that the op­er­a­tional­i­sa­tion of the law was not aimed at gen­er­at­ing Gov­ern­ment rev­enue. Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Er­la Hare­wood-Christo­pher said the move will bol­ster the po­lice’s crime-fight­ing ef­forts.

“We see it as an­oth­er tool in our ar­se­nal, as we con­tin­ue to fight crime and crim­i­nal­i­ty. You would have heard from the oth­er pre­sen­ters, the chal­lenges with dark­ly tint­ed ve­hi­cles, if we look at of­fi­cer safe­ty, for one, that is im­por­tant,” Hare­wood-Christo­pher said.

She said the use of the elec­tron­ic me­ters will help stan­dard­ise the process.

“And yes we move away from the sub­jec­tiv­i­ty with the of­fi­cers, so now with the im­ple­men­ta­tion of the elec­tron­ic me­ter, we can­not com­plain of the of­fi­cers’ sub­jec­tiv­i­ty.”

The top CoP al­so en­cour­aged mo­torists to seize the op­por­tu­ni­ty to fa­mil­iarise them­selves with the reg­u­la­tions and not­ed that an es­ti­mat­ed 200 po­lice of­fi­cers have al­ready been trained in the use of light trans­mit­tance mea­sur­ing de­vices.

Trans­port Com­mis­sion­er Clive Clarke con­ced­ed there was a need for ve­hi­cles to be tint­ed, but said he was dis­turbed with the safe­ty and se­cu­ri­ty risks it posed, par­tic­u­lar­ly to­wards law en­force­ment.

“We are on the ground in To­ba­go right now and I have ma­jor con­cerns with what I’m see­ing across there with tint. The tint is not five per cent, it is like 0 and as law en­force­ment, when you stand there you don’t know what is fac­ing you and I have se­ri­ous con­cerns with that.”

Ac­cord­ing to reg­u­la­tion 3(1) of the act, the min­i­mum lev­els of vis­i­ble light trans­mit­tance (VLT) for the wind­screen should be at least 70 per cent. The wind­screen’s an­ti-glare band­width, which is six inch­es or 15 cen­time­tres from the top, should be at least 35%. The VLT for front win­dows (dri­ver and pas­sen­ger) should be at least 35%, the rear win­dows (in­clud­ing side win­dows) at least 20% and the rear wind­screen at least 20%.

The reg­u­la­tions al­so re­quire mo­torists to seek per­mis­sion from the Li­cens­ing Au­thor­i­ty to coat wind­screen or win­dows with any ma­te­r­i­al, over­lay or oth­er prod­ucts. Per­fo­rat­ed film ap­plied to rear win­dows and metal­lic, re­flec­tive or mir­rored ef­fects suf­fi­cient to daz­zle mo­torists is al­so out­lawed. Reg­u­la­tion five pro­hibits the in­stal­la­tion of cur­tain, screens or oth­er de­vices that ob­struct the view of a per­son in­to the ve­hi­cle un­less ap­proved by the Li­cens­ing Au­thor­i­ty. An ex­cep­tion is made in cas­es where a screen is used in a rear win­dow to shield a child five years or younger from di­rect sun­light. Clarke ex­plained that the penal­ties for vi­o­lat­ing the reg­u­la­tions range from fines to de­mer­it points. For ex­am­ple, fail­ure to com­ply with the per­mis­si­ble vis­i­ble light trans­mit­tance of ma­te­r­i­al on the wind­screen and win­dow of mo­tor ve­hi­cle car­ries a fixed penal­ty of $2,000.

“We have no 5000 dol­lars tick­et and I must say that be­cause we get mis­in­for­ma­tion, but in the event you con­test that tick­et, the court can then de­cide what penal­ty will be giv­en.”

In­stal­la­tion of unau­tho­rised cur­tains, screen or oth­er de­vices on mo­tor ve­hi­cles car­ry a fixed penal­ty of $750 and two de­mer­it points.

Clarke said tint shops as well as in­spec­tion sta­tions have the nec­es­sary tools and de­vices to as­sist in de­ter­min­ing whether ve­hi­cles had the per­mis­si­ble VLT.


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