Jesse Ramdeo

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.