SHAL­IZA HAS­SANALI

Se­nior In­ves­tiga­tive Re­porter

Shal­iza.has­sanali@guardian.co.tt

In a move that com­bines high-stakes pol­i­tics and com­mu­ni­ty se­cu­ri­ty, the new wave of po­lice posts is be­ing strate­gi­cal­ly placed in Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC) ar­eas.

This was the view shared by crim­i­nol­o­gist Dau­rius Figueira, fol­low­ing the Au­gust 3 an­nounce­ment by Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar that the Gov­ern­ment will es­tab­lish 30 po­lice posts through­out T&T over the next four months, as part of on­go­ing ef­forts to strength­en se­cu­ri­ty pres­ence na­tion­wide.

The lo­ca­tions of 24 of the 30 po­lice posts were iden­ti­fied, with the re­main­ing six to be de­ter­mined.

Con­struc­tion is cur­rent­ly un­der­way at three of the first po­lice posts at Ed­die Hart Grounds in Tacarigua, Tarou­ba in San Fer­nan­do and Grand Bazaar in Val­sayn.

Pub­lic Util­i­ties Min­is­ter and Cou­va South MP Bar­ry Padarath said dis­cus­sions are al­so on­go­ing to in­stall a unit at Car­li Bay, Cou­va, while the lo­ca­tions for six are yet to be de­ter­mined.

Com­ment­ing on the ini­tia­tive, Figueira point­ed out that the strate­gic place­ment of these units in UNC-con­trolled con­stituen­cies is no co­in­ci­dence, in­sist­ing it was care­ful­ly thought out.

Of the 24 po­lice posts iden­ti­fied, nine are ear­marked for con­struc­tion in South, in the com­mu­ni­ties of Tarou­ba, Williamsville, Pe­nal, La Ro­maine, Guayagua­yare, Gol­con­da, Princes Town and Ica­cos.

Six will be in­stalled in the Cen­tral dis­trict.

These ar­eas are Ca­roni, Ch­agua­nas, Carlsen Field, Ca­paro, Cou­va and Tabaquite.

An­oth­er six will be built in Aranguez, Grand Bazaar, St Joseph, Tu­na­puna and Tacarigua, go­ing as far east as De­mer­ara Road near the Churchill Roo­sevelt High­way.

Along the North­east­ern re­gion, a po­lice post will be in­stalled in To­co as well as in Cu­mu­to.

One unit would al­so be con­struct­ed in the north­west­ern area of La­dy Young Road.

The posts will be equipped with wa­ter, elec­tric­i­ty, toi­let fa­cil­i­ties, sur­veil­lance cam­eras and com­put­ers.

The list showed that no po­lice posts were planned for the Port-of-Spain, West­ern and To­ba­go di­vi­sions.

The TTPS has nine di­vi­sions.

Weigh­ing in on the is­sue, Figueira said more than half of the 24 po­lice posts will be built in UNC strong­hold ar­eas.

“The (po­lice) posts will be pre­dom­i­nant­ly built in the core of the UNC ar­eas. So what is hap­pen­ing... the dis­tri­b­u­tion of the posts is send­ing a mes­sage... a strate­gic mes­sage, where you are look­ing to show up your con­stituen­cy base by in­sist­ing to them that you are now giv­ing them an ex­tra lay­er of se­cu­ri­ty to pro­tect them from crime. For the ten years you were in Op­po­si­tion, all you were sell­ing to your vot­ers was moral pan­ic,” Figueira said.

The UNC won the gen­er­al elec­tion last April, cap­tur­ing 26 of the 41 seats to the Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment’s (PNM) 13, while the To­ba­go Peo­ple’s Par­ty walked away with two seats.

In their sweep­ing vic­to­ry, the UNC wres­tled the Tu­na­puna, Point Fortin, La Brea, To­co/San­gre Grande, San Fer­nan­do West, La Hor­quet­ta/Tal­paro and Aranguez/St Joseph seats from the PNM.

Figueira said in­stalling a po­lice post in Gol­con­da will of­fer sup­port to the Gov­ern­ment’s pro­posed plan to build a da­ta cen­tre in that com­mu­ni­ty.

“There is a geopo­lit­i­cal rea­son for that post go­ing there.”

Re­cent­ly, En­er­gy Min­is­ter Dr Roodal Mooni­lal an­nounced that the Gov­ern­ment in­tends to build a da­ta cen­tre in Gol­con­da in the com­ing months.

“So putting down the ma­jor­i­ty of po­lice posts south of the Ca­roni Bridge suits pol­i­tics and a geopo­lit­i­cal im­per­a­tive. If that da­ta cen­tre is pro­cess­ing Pen­ta­gon da­ta, do you know it is un­der the pro­tec­tion of Amer­i­ca? They will have to pro­tect that plant.”

When asked why the Gov­ern­ment chose to es­tab­lish a po­lice post at Ed­die Hart Grounds, de­spite its prox­im­i­ty to the St Joseph, Tu­na­puna and Arou­ca Po­lice Sta­tions, Figueira said that move could be a tac­tic to “shut down” the trans­port routes of the East­ern Main Road, Pri­or­i­ty Bus Route and Churchill Roo­sevelt High­way in case of any un­rest.

“So, that sends a sig­nal to me that you are ex­pect­ing un­rest in the East-West cor­ri­dor.”

He said the lo­ca­tions of the oth­er po­lice posts can al­so block off ma­jor trans­port cor­ri­dors.

Two weeks ago, con­struc­tion of the po­lice post at the Ed­die Hart Recre­ation Ground led to a stand-off be­tween the Gov­ern­ment and the PNM-con­trolled Tu­na­puna/ Pi­ar­co Re­gion­al Cor­po­ra­tion (TPRC).

In the con­text of 21st-cen­tu­ry polic­ing, how­ev­er, Figueira said build­ing po­lice posts has be­come out­dat­ed.

“That’s an old colo­nial method that has been made re­dun­dant by the na­ture of crim­i­nal­i­ty in the 21st cen­tu­ry.”

Not­ing that Amer­i­can po­lice have moved away from sta­t­ic polic­ing and are now deep in­to po­lice pa­trolling, Figueira said po­lice posts were a “back­ward step” and are like­ly to fail.

Hav­ing re­viewed the lo­ca­tions of the 24 po­lice posts, Figueira said none were list­ed in the Port-of-Spain and West­ern di­vi­sions.

While the East-West cor­ri­dor has al­ways been a hotbed for crim­i­nal­i­ty, he said Port-of-Spain is the beat­ing heart of gang­land in Trinidad.

“So, if you are putting down (po­lice) posts to ar­rest crim­i­nal­i­ty, you are sup­posed to start in the hottest ar­eas.”

Crim­i­nol­o­gist Dr Keron King al­so said he was not in favour of the po­lice posts.

“The ide­al way to build a po­lice re­sponse is to have of­fi­cers in pa­trol cars. This busi­ness about hav­ing a po­lice sta­tion or a po­lice post every 10 or 20 me­tres is not what mod­ern polic­ing is about. Mod­ern polic­ing is about po­lice of­fi­cers on the beat and re­ceiv­ing calls, whether through an app or through the com­mand cen­tre,” King told the Sun­day Guardian.

King said he was not on board with Gov­ern­ment’s method.

“But I await to see if I am proven wrong or they are proven right. I don’t know what they are see­ing from their point of view that may have in­flu­enced them be­cause they may think they have thought it out very thor­ough­ly.”

Mean­while, strate­gic se­cu­ri­ty con­sul­tant Dr Garvin Heer­ah said a struc­tured, in­tel­li­gence-led due dili­gence process must guide the es­tab­lish­ment of these po­lice posts. He said the units should pro­vide the great­est op­er­a­tional and se­cu­ri­ty ben­e­fit to the na­tion­al polic­ing grid.

“These fa­cil­i­ties should not mere­ly be po­lice build­ings where of­fi­cers are sta­tioned. They should func­tion as in­ter­con­nect­ed op­er­a­tional nodes with­in a na­tion­al net­work, al­low­ing in­for­ma­tion to move rapid­ly from the com­mu­ni­ty lev­el to di­vi­sion­al and na­tion­al com­mand, and al­low­ing de­ci­sions and re­sources to move just as quick­ly in the op­po­site di­rec­tion,” Heer­ah said.

There­fore, he said there should be a for­mal site-se­lec­tion ma­trix, with mea­sur­able cri­te­ria, in­clud­ing prox­im­i­ty, re­sponse time, pop­u­la­tion den­si­ty, traf­fic pat­terns, crime and in­tel­li­gence in­di­ca­tors, crim­i­nal net­works, choke points, CCTV cov­er­age, com­mu­ni­ca­tions in­fra­struc­ture, ac­ces­si­bil­i­ty and fu­ture growth.

Heer­ah said the au­thor­i­ties should al­so ex­am­ine ex­ist­ing crime pat­terns, known of­fend­ers, crim­i­nal net­works, gang ac­tiv­i­ty, drug-traf­fick­ing routes, firearms ac­tiv­i­ty and oth­er rel­e­vant in­tel­li­gence.

“I would rec­om­mend that the Gov­ern­ment first un­der­take a re­view of the ex­ist­ing na­tion­al polic­ing foot­print and de­vel­op what could be de­scribed as a re­struc­tured na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty and polic­ing grid. This grid should map ex­ist­ing po­lice sta­tions, pro­posed com­mand posts, re­sponse ca­pa­bil­i­ties, ma­jor trans­porta­tion routes, pop­u­la­tion cen­tres, high-risk com­mu­ni­ties and crit­i­cal in­fra­struc­ture.”

Against this back­drop, Heer­ah said there should be con­sul­ta­tion with di­vi­sion­al com­man­ders, in­tel­li­gence per­son­nel, traf­fic spe­cial­ists, plan­ners, lo­cal gov­ern­ment rep­re­sen­ta­tives and, im­por­tant­ly, the com­mu­ni­ties them­selves.

“The Gov­ern­ment should be able to demon­strate why each lo­ca­tion was se­lect­ed, rather than sim­ply an­nounc­ing where the build­ings will be con­struct­ed.”

Heer­ah said sev­er­al fac­tors must be con­sid­ered in se­lect­ing each lo­ca­tion.

“A com­mand post should be po­si­tioned based on its abil­i­ty to re­duce po­lice re­sponse times and pro­vide ef­fec­tive cov­er­age to sur­round­ing com­mu­ni­ties. Ge­o­graph­ic dis­tance alone is not enough. A lo­ca­tion that ap­pears close on a map may be op­er­a­tional­ly dis­tant be­cause of traf­fic con­ges­tion, road con­di­tions, bridges, lim­it­ed ac­cess routes or oth­er bot­tle­necks,” he said.

Traf­fic pat­terns must there­fore be in­cor­po­rat­ed in­to the plan­ning, said Heer­ah, a for­mer di­rec­tor of the Na­tion­al Op­er­a­tions Cen­tre.

“Gov­ern­ment should ex­am­ine peak-hour con­ges­tion, al­ter­na­tive routes, road net­works and the abil­i­ty of po­lice ve­hi­cles to move rapid­ly dur­ing emer­gen­cies. The ob­jec­tive should be to es­tab­lish a net­work that pro­vides over­lap­ping cov­er­age rather than iso­lat­ed posts.”

Heer­ah said one fac­tor to keep in mind is pop­u­la­tion den­si­ty and com­mu­ni­ty vul­ner­a­bil­i­ty.

“Crit­i­cal­ly, the process must be in­tel­li­gence-led. His­tor­i­cal crime da­ta is im­por­tant, but it should not be the on­ly con­sid­er­a­tion. In­tel­li­gence should al­so iden­ti­fy emerg­ing threats and po­ten­tial dis­place­ment, be­cause crim­i­nals can adapt when polic­ing pres­sure is in­creased in one lo­ca­tion.”

He said the ul­ti­mate ob­jec­tive should be to cre­ate a prop­er­ly con­nect­ed na­tion­al polic­ing grid in which every com­mand post has a de­fined ge­o­graph­ic and op­er­a­tional pur­pose, mea­sur­able re­sponse-time ob­jec­tives, in­tel­li­gence ca­pa­bil­i­ty, tech­no­log­i­cal con­nec­tiv­i­ty and a clear re­la­tion­ship with neigh­bour­ing po­lice fa­cil­i­ties.

“If that due process is fol­lowed, the 30 com­mand posts could be­come a sig­nif­i­cant en­hance­ment to na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty. If the em­pha­sis is placed pri­mar­i­ly on the speed and num­ber of build­ings con­struct­ed, we risk cre­at­ing in­fra­struc­ture with­out nec­es­sar­i­ly cre­at­ing ca­pa­bil­i­ty,” Heer­ah said.

Al­so to be con­sid­ered, he not­ed, are the high­ly pop­u­lat­ed Venezue­lan com­mu­ni­ties that have start­ed to pop up in var­i­ous ge­o­gra­phies.

“In such ar­eas, maybe the com­mand posts can be in­ter-agency, in­volv­ing Im­mi­gra­tion, be­cause that is­sue has the propen­si­ty to in­crease and ex­pand, pos­ing chal­lenges to law en­force­ment down range.”

On an­oth­er is­sue, for­mer Joint Con­sul­ta­tive Coun­cil pres­i­dent Afra Ray­mond asked how the Min­istry of Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty could breach the pro­cure­ment law.

He re­ferred to the Of­fice of the Pro­cure­ment Reg­u­la­tion, which was asked to in­ves­ti­gate the pro­cure­ment and con­struc­tion of the po­lice posts, amid ques­tions about how con­trac­tors were se­lect­ed, the source of fund­ing and whether projects were sub­ject­ed to a com­pet­i­tive ten­der­ing process, ques­tions Gov­ern­ment has re­peat­ed­ly re­fused to an­swer thus far.

The com­plaint was filed by Ran­dall Mitchell on be­half of so­cial ac­tivist Wen­dell Everse­ly, with for­mer prime min­is­ter and Port-of-Spain North/St Ann’s West MP Stu­art Young al­so in­struct­ing in the mat­ter.

Ray­mond said in the OPR’s 2023/2024 re­port, it iden­ti­fied the then Min­istry of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty as be­ing “ful­ly non-com­pli­ant” with its con­tract re­port­ing.

He said a rule was cre­at­ed that any­thing “un­der a mil­lion dol­lars does not have to fit in­to pro­cure­ment.”

“They will prob­a­bly just say all these things…that it’s less than that. Or they broke them up in­to con­tracts to make it less than that. But that is not go­ing to work,” Ray­mond said.

“The point is they are sup­posed to fol­low the rules. Be­cause they are the ones who want the rest of us to fol­low the rules.”

On Thurs­day, the Sun­day Guardian What­sApped a list of ques­tions to the Prime Min­is­ter, in­clud­ing Figueira’s claims, but she did not re­spond.

Ques­tions were al­so sent to Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Roger Alexan­der, who asked, “Is this the same Figueira that was fired from UWI? If so, ask him why. You have a nice day ok.”

CoP, min­is­ter tight-lipped on op­er­a­tional as­pect

Re­cent­ly, Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Al­lis­ter Gue­var­ro de­fend­ed the Gov­ern­ment’s move to con­struct po­lice posts in com­mu­ni­ties across the coun­try as part of its an­ti-crime plan.

Alexan­der and Gue­var­ro have re­mained tight-lipped re­gard­ing staffing lo­gis­tics and op­er­a­tional re­quire­ments to im­ple­ment the ini­tia­tive.

The top cop said the units rep­re­sent an­oth­er step in build­ing a mod­ern, re­spon­sive and trust­ed po­lice ser­vice.

With de­ploy­ment lo­ca­tions be­ing in­formed by da­ta from the Crime and Prob­lem Analy­sis Branch (CA­PA), Gue­var­ro promised that the units will be strate­gi­cal­ly placed to coun­ter­act crime trends.

“They form a crit­i­cal part of the cur­rent an­ti-crime strat­e­gy and will serve mul­ti­ple func­tions,” Gue­var­ro said.

This ini­tia­tive is promis­ing to bring tan­gi­ble ben­e­fits such as faster re­sponse times, en­hanced com­mu­ni­ty en­gage­ment be­tween of­fi­cers and res­i­dents and crime-sup­pres­sion in­ter­ven­tions.

Dur­ing a tour of the Tarou­ba po­lice post this week, Alexan­der said that no price was too high to save lives, es­pe­cial­ly since crime has been out of con­trol for years.

Alexan­der said pub­lic de­mand for the posts has been grow­ing, as more com­mu­ni­ties have been ask­ing for them.

Ship­ping con­tain­ers will be utilised in some com­mu­ni­ties to pro­vide ad­di­tion­al man­pow­er and sup­port com­mu­ni­ty-ori­ent­ed polic­ing.

Asked if the US gov­ern­ment was as­sist­ing with the ini­tia­tive, Alexan­der said, “We con­tin­ue to ap­pre­ci­ate what our al­lies and our part­ners are do­ing for us and with us.”

Crime by di­vi­sions

Sta­tis­tics from the TTPS web­site for the pe­ri­od Jan­u­ary to April of 2026 showed that the North­ern Di­vi­sion had the high­est num­ber of re­port­ed of­fences, to­talling 621.

Trail­ing be­hind were the Port-of-Spain, Cen­tral and South­ern Di­vi­sions with 390, 352 and 340 of­fences, re­spec­tive­ly.

There were 210 of­fences re­port­ed in the West­ern Di­vi­sion.

While the North­ern Di­vi­sion solved 120 cas­es, Port-of-Spain de­tect­ed 36 cas­es, which rep­re­sent­ed a de­tec­tion rate of 9.2 per cent.

Cen­tral Di­vi­sion de­tect­ed 115 of­fences, while the de­tec­tion rate for the South­ern Di­vi­sion was 48.8 per cent.

West­ern Di­vi­sion solved 47 of the 210 re­port­ed of­fences.

The TTPS list­ed 15 cat­e­gories of of­fences.

Among them are crimes such as mur­der, rob­beries, bur­glar­ies and break-ins, kid­nap­pings, wound­ing and shoot­ings, lar­ce­ny of mo­tor ve­hi­cles and pos­ses­sion of firearms and am­mu­ni­tion.

Last year, the North­ern Di­vi­sion topped the list with 2,570 re­port­ed of­fences, fol­lowed by Cen­tral Di­vi­sion with 1,666, South­ern Di­vi­sion record­ed 1,359, and Port-of-Spain re­port­ed 1,201 of­fences.

Over­all, the nine di­vi­sions re­port­ed 10,770 of­fences in 2025, with 3,607 of­fences be­ing solved over the 12 months.

The top five of­fences by di­vi­sions were rob­beries, gen­er­al lar­ce­ny, bur­glar­ies and break-ins, pos­ses­sion of firearms and lar­ce­ny of ve­hi­cles.

Lo­ca­tions of the 24 po­lice posts:

1) Tarou­ba

2) Grand Bazaar

3) Cou­va In­ter­change

4) Williamsville Junc­tion

5) Guayagua­yare (Next to In­di­an Bay)

6) Junc­tion of Rochard Road and Pe­nal Rock Road

7) Junc­tion of Rochard Dou­glas Road and Cu­mu­to Road (next to crick­et ground)

8) In­ter­sec­tion of South­ern Main Road, La Ro­maine and South Trunk Road/High­way ad­ja­cent to Paria Suites

9) Junc­tion of Todd’s Road and Ca­paro Val­ley Road (near Todd’s Road Recre­ation Ground)

10) Junc­tion of Tamana Road and Cu­mu­to Road

11) Kel­ly Vil­lage, Ca­roni

12) De­mer­ara Road, Churchill Roo­sevelt High­way

13) Area be­tween Aranguez Main Road, John­ny King Road and Bridge Road

14) Ed­die Hart Grounds, Tacarigua

15) An­oth­er site to be de­ter­mined in Tu­na­puna

16) Ica­cos Junc­tion

17) Lo­ca­tion along the To­co Main Road

18) Carlsen Field

19) Fe­lic­i­ty Ch­agua­nas

20) La­dy Young Road (near the walkover)

21) Acono Road, St Joseph

22) Mal­gretoute Junc­tion, Princes Town. (op­po­site WASA boost­er sta­tion)

23) Gol­con­da In­ter­change

24) Tor­rib Road, Tabaquite