An­na-Lisa Paul

Se­nior Re­porter

an­na-lisa.paul@guardian.co.tt

Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Roger Alexan­der has promised a “to­tal re­con­struc­tion” of the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice (TTPS) as he be­lieves the man­pow­er re­sources of the or­gan­i­sa­tion have not kept pace with the evolv­ing face of crime over the past sev­er­al years.

Re­spond­ing to ques­tions dur­ing a can­cer screen­ing part­ner­ship at his con­stituen­cy of­fice at the cor­ner of Green Street and El Do­ra­do Road, Tu­na­puna, yes­ter­day, he said, “I am look­ing at a to­tal re­con­struc­tion of the TTPS.”

It was a more re­served and som­bre Alexan­der who field­ed ques­tions from re­porters fol­low­ing Wednes­day’s Stand­ing Fi­nance Com­mit­tee, in which he had been pressed to talk about bud­get cuts, ve­hi­cle main­te­nance, and long-term plans by the TTPS to tack­le crime and crim­i­nal­i­ty.

De­fend­ing the need to in­crease re­cruit­ment num­bers in the TTPS, he ex­plained, “Every time a batch of po­lice come in, per­sons are of the same age.”

“So let’s say a batch come in, a man may be 22, 23, 24, 25...and when they come in, when time to leave, they leave about the same time. So let’s say you have a batch of around 150. At least 75 per cent of that 150 is go­ing to leave at about the same time.”

Say­ing it took ap­prox­i­mate­ly six months to train a po­lice of­fi­cer, he said, “We need to come up to date with train­ing and re­cruit­ing.”

Alexan­der said that de­spite the 6,545 po­lice of­fi­cers on ac­tive du­ty, the TTPS was still fac­ing a man­pow­er short­age of just over 1,300.

He asked, “How does that fit in­to a so­ci­ety that seems to have more per­sons com­ing in il­le­gal­ly?”

“How does that fit in­to a so­ci­ety where chil­dren are be­hav­ing strange, and it is ac­cept­ed by par­ents and so­ci­ety? How does that fit in?”

“I am look­ing at a to­tal re­con­struc­tion of the TTPS,” the min­is­ter said.

“In terms of its strength, we must now look to see if the strength that we had cre­at­ed in 2008 is suf­fi­cient to po­lice now with the amount of per­sons liv­ing in T&T.”

The Tu­na­puna MP agreed the hu­man re­source com­po­nent of the TTPS had not kept pace with the evo­lu­tion of crime and in­di­cat­ed, “The sanc­tioned strength needs to change.”

Point­ing out that this was done in sev­er­al coun­tries, in­clud­ing Ja­maica, Alexan­der said the TTPS con­tin­ued to op­er­ate with num­bers dat­ing as far back as 2006.

This, he said, was al­so di­rect­ly tied to the is­sue of bal­loon­ing over­time, as of­fi­cers were be­ing forced to work ad­di­tion­al shifts and even be­yond their as­signed times when col­leagues called in sick or were off du­ty.

Re­gard­ing his re­fusal to re­veal ex­act­ly which com­pa­nies would be re­spon­si­ble for ve­hi­cle main­te­nance with­in the TTPS, Alexan­der stuck to his guns and re­mained silent on the mat­ter.

“I am not in­ter­est­ed in giv­ing all of that,” he stat­ed.

How­ev­er, he shared, “When you look at what is hap­pen­ing from the Op­po­si­tion per­spec­tive, you have to un­der­stand how and what per­sons look for, and if, for some rea­son, they have friends and col­leagues who seem to be ques­tion­able in terms of their be­hav­iour and ac­tiv­i­ties, from what we are see­ing.

“Look at the CEPEP thing and all of that. One must be cau­tious as to how he gives out in­for­ma­tion con­cern­ing law en­force­ment and their ac­tiv­i­ties.”