Ot­to Car­ring­ton

Se­nior Re­porter

ot­to.car­ring­ton@guardian.co.tt

Trinidad and To­ba­go’s top GPS track­ing and ve­hi­cle se­cu­ri­ty com­pa­nies are call­ing on the State to for­mal­ly col­lab­o­rate with them, as the coun­try faces a wors­en­ing cri­sis of ve­hi­cle theft and per­son­al safe­ty. This call comes amid the star­tling fact that on­ly 30 per cent of ve­hi­cles on the road are equipped with track­ing de­vices—and many of those are in­ac­tive.

This sta­tis­tic, shared by lead­ing GPS providers and sup­port­ed by in­sur­ance in­dus­try da­ta, has trig­gered a crit­i­cal shift in the coun­try’s pri­vate se­cu­ri­ty sec­tor. In re­sponse, a new First Re­spon­ders Al­liance has been formed to ad­dress the es­ca­lat­ing threats of car theft, per­son­al crime, and pub­lic safe­ty.

Amid sky­rock­et­ing ve­hi­cle theft and the grow­ing dan­ger of crimes such as kid­nap­pings, GPS track­ing firms in T&T are sound­ing the alarm with the cre­ation of this al­liance.

So far, four com­pa­nies have joined the as­so­ci­a­tion, led by Air Sup­port Tac­ti­cal Se­cu­ri­ty Lim­it­ed.

CEO of Air Sup­port Tac­ti­cal Se­cu­ri­ty Dirk Barnes led the sec­ond high-lev­el in­dus­try meet­ing this week with top GPS providers in­clud­ing Navi Tech­nolo­gies, Az Tech, In­track So­lu­tion Lim­it­ed, and Cyl­co Track­ing fo­cus­ing on bridg­ing gaps in se­cu­ri­ty, in­tel­li­gence shar­ing, and pub­lic ed­u­ca­tion.

“We’ve re­alised that the days of see­ing each oth­er on­ly as com­peti­tors are over. This is about pub­lic safe­ty now,” Barnes said fol­low­ing the stake­hold­er meet­ing.

“We are form­ing this al­liance to bridge the mas­sive gap in first re­sponse, be­cause right now, the Trinidad and To­ba­go Po­lice Ser­vice does not have the ca­pac­i­ty to keep up.”

The al­liance aims to pool re­sources, in­tel­li­gence, and re­al-time da­ta to sup­port the un­der-re­sourced Trinidad and To­ba­go Po­lice Ser­vice (TTPS) in track­ing and re­cov­er­ing stolen ve­hi­cles which of­ten be­come tools for more se­ri­ous crimes, in­clud­ing rob­beries, kid­nap­pings, and mur­ders.

Barnes point­ed to alarm­ing sta­tis­tics: be­tween 2021 and 2023, mo­tor ve­hi­cle theft spiked by over 300 per cent, with as many as 1,800 ve­hi­cles stolen an­nu­al­ly. Yet, the TTPS’s re­trieval rate re­mains around 35 per cent. Much of that re­cov­ery, he not­ed, is due to pri­vate GPS track­ing sys­tems.

“Car thieves are op­er­at­ing like pro­fes­sion­als now. They move at 2 am, strip a ve­hi­cle in 30 min­utes, and dis­ap­pear,” Barnes ex­plained. “By morn­ing, what was once a $400,000 SUV is just parts scat­tered across the coun­try.”

He warned that while many mo­torists be­lieve hav­ing a track­ing de­vice is enough to pro­tect them, the re­al­i­ty is far more com­plex. Many sys­tems are out­dat­ed, im­prop­er­ly in­stalled, or in­ac­tive es­pe­cial­ly where users ne­glect to main­tain da­ta plans or up­date their ser­vices.

“A GPS is just a teleme­try tool. It doesn’t fight back. It doesn’t call the po­lice. The re­al de­ter­rent is the net­work and rapid re­sponse be­hind it,” he said.

“And right now, too many are fly­ing blind. Even worse, many stolen ve­hi­cles that had GPS track­ers in­stalled were nev­er re­cov­ered ei­ther be­cause the de­vices had no ac­tive sig­nal or be­cause thieves dis­man­tled the car be­fore any alert could be trig­gered.”

As GPS com­pa­nies po­si­tion them­selves as front­line al­lies in the fight against crime, the mes­sage to the pub­lic is clear: in­stall a track­er, main­tain it, and ask your in­sur­er about avail­able dis­counts.

Their mes­sage to the State? Work with us.

“If we re­duce stolen ve­hi­cles, we re­duce mo­bil­i­ty for crim­i­nals. That slows rob­bery, kid­nap­ping, even mur­der,” Barnes said. “We’re not just pro­tect­ing cars we’re pro­tect­ing lives.”