The Police Service Social and Welfare Association (TTPSSWA) wants Prime Minister Dr Keith Rowley to know that sport utility vehicles (SUVs) are not a luxury, but rather a necessity for their line of work.
On Thursday during the opening of the Carenage Police Station, the Prime Minister announced that he had turned down a Cabinet note requesting 80 SUVs for the Police Service at a cost of $80 million.
The Prime Minister said he questioned if any police officer ever needed to use a 4-wheel-drive feature and called the vehicles “fashionable.”
He then instructed the Cabinet to find more “durable and useful” vehicles.
Yesterday, however, TTPSSWA president Inspector Gideon Dickson told Guardian Media that Rowley’s comments were “rather unfortunate.”
He said the SUVs are in fact quite useful.
“The vehicles must be able to withstand the kind of terrain that Trinidad and Tobago has, we have bad roads, hilly areas but we also have to cater for the police officer who has firearms and other items that he is moving with when going out on the beat,” Dickson told Guardian Media.
Dickson added that police vehicles work 24 hours a day and SUVs are consistent with the times.
He did acknowledge that some police officers may mishandle the vehicles, but he said there is due process to discipline them.
“We would also admonish our officers who may have acted in a delinquent manner and we have a tribunal system to deal with that but by and large, those vehicles work all day, every day,” he said.
Dickson, however, agreed with the Prime Minister that there is a need for the TTPS to ask questions of its fleet management system which is tasked with oversight on police vehicles.
He said, “There might be different schools of thought on how you manage that. For example, should you, if a vehicle is down, take parts from another vehicle that is down? All these things and then the bureaucracy that goes with it, there may be a need for a whole review on where the gaps in the system are.”
However, he said the solution is not as simple as saying the SUVs are not needed.
Yesterday, Police Commissioner Gary Griffith said he will respond to the Prime Minister personally and will “advise him accordingly.”
He also criticised the media for focusing on that aspect of the PM’s remarks, rather than the praise Rowley heaped on the TTPS for their work during the pandemic.