Akash Sama­roo

Lead Ed­i­tor-Pol­i­tics

akash.sama­roo@cnc3.co.tt

Po­lice are mov­ing to widen speed en­force­ment be­yond the na­tion’s high­ways with new laser de­tec­tion de­vices, while up­grad­ing breathal­y­sers to strength­en the crack­down on mo­torists dri­ving un­der the in­flu­ence.

Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Roger Alexan­der says the Trinidad and To­ba­go Po­lice Ser­vice (TTPS) is de­ploy­ing the new speed de­tec­tion de­vices, train­ing more of­fi­cers to op­er­ate them and ac­quir­ing sup­port­ing equip­ment to in­crease en­force­ment across the coun­try.

Alexan­der out­lined the mea­sures in the Sen­ate yes­ter­day, in re­sponse to a ques­tion from Op­po­si­tion Sen­a­tor Melanie Roberts-Radg­man, who asked what was be­ing done amid con­tin­ued re­ports of se­ri­ous and fa­tal road traf­fic ac­ci­dents.

He said the TTPS was strength­en­ing tar­get­ed op­er­a­tions against speed­ing, dri­ving un­der the in­flu­ence of al­co­hol or drugs, seat-belt vi­o­la­tions and oth­er traf­fic of­fences.

“In re­la­tion to speed­ing, Mr Pres­i­dent, the Trinidad and To­ba­go Po­lice Ser­vice is de­ploy­ing new laser speed de­tec­tion de­vices, train­ing ad­di­tion­al op­er­a­tors, and procur­ing sup­port­ing equip­ment,” Alexan­der said.

“This is in­tend­ed to ex­pand speed en­force­ment be­yond high­ways, pa­trol through di­vi­sion­al traf­fic units, and strength­en en­force­ment along ma­jor road­ways.”

The move builds on the TTPS’ in­tro­duc­tion of 20 new Li­DAR speed de­tec­tion de­vices in May.

The de­vices, which were hand­ed over to the Traf­fic and High­way Pa­trol Branch, were in­tro­duced to strength­en the po­lice ser­vice’s abil­i­ty to de­tect speed­ing mo­torists. They al­low of­fi­cers to de­tect ve­hi­cles from greater dis­tances, op­er­ate at night and cap­ture clear­er im­ages of reg­is­tra­tion plates.

At the time, Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Al­lis­ter Gue­var­ro said the tech­nol­o­gy would give of­fi­cers greater ca­pa­bil­i­ties to tar­get mo­torists breach­ing speed lim­its.

But speed­ing is on­ly one part of the en­force­ment push, Alexan­der told the Sen­ate.

“The Trinidad and To­ba­go Po­lice Ser­vice is al­so up­grad­ing its breathal­yser equip­ment to strength­en en­force­ment against dri­ving un­der the in­flu­ence,” he said.

An­oth­er com­po­nent of the road safe­ty dri­ve will in­volve greater use of au­to­mat­ed en­force­ment.

Alexan­der said the Min­istry of Trans­port and Civ­il Avi­a­tion plans to in­tro­duce a high­way speed-lim­it and red-light en­force­ment cam­era sys­tem, which is ex­pect­ed to fur­ther sup­port traf­fic law en­force­ment.

How­ev­er, there is still no clear time­line for when all of the mea­sures will be ful­ly op­er­a­tional.

In a fol­low-up ques­tion, Roberts-Radg­man asked when the breathal­y­sers, speed de­tec­tion de­vices and en­force­ment cam­eras were ex­pect­ed to come on stream.

Alexan­der said po­lice were cur­rent­ly work­ing with the equip­ment al­ready avail­able, while pro­cure­ment re­lat­ed to the cam­era sys­tem would be han­dled by the Min­istry of Trans­port and Civ­il Avi­a­tion.

“At this time, we are op­er­at­ing with what we have,” he said.

This echoed his re­sponse to pre­vi­ous ques­tions on whether the TTPS has enough body cam­eras to ful­fil its du­ties, par­tic­u­lar­ly with spe­cial op­er­a­tions com­ing.

The stepped-up en­force­ment comes as road fa­tal­i­ties showed a de­cline dur­ing the ear­li­er part of this year.

Ac­cord­ing to sta­tis­tics pub­lished by Ar­rive Alive, T&T record­ed 61 road traf­fic ac­ci­dents re­sult­ing in 64 deaths as of Sep­tem­ber 21, 2026. All 64 peo­ple killed were adults, in­clud­ing 19 dri­vers and nine pas­sen­gers, with no mi­nors record­ed among the fa­tal­i­ties.

The fig­ures rep­re­sent a sig­nif­i­cant de­cline com­pared with 2025, when 106 fa­tal crash­es claimed 118 lives. That year, 34 dri­vers and 31 pas­sen­gers were among those killed.

The 2025 death toll was it­self 4.8 per cent low­er than the 124 road fa­tal­i­ties record­ed in 2024, while fa­tal crash­es fell 9.4 per cent from 117 in 2024 to 106 in 2025.