The T&T Po­lice Ser­vice (TTPS) says while it main­tained a strong op­er­a­tional pres­ence dur­ing elec­tion day 2025 yes­ter­day, sev­er­al ir­reg­u­lar­i­ties were re­port­ed and are cur­rent­ly un­der in­ves­ti­ga­tion.

Deputy Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice, In­tel­li­gence & In­ves­ti­ga­tions, Suzette Mar­tin, con­firmed, “While the ma­jor­i­ty of the day’s ac­tiv­i­ties pro­ceed­ed peace­ful­ly, we did re­ceive sev­er­al re­ports, in­clud­ing bribery, in­tim­i­da­tion, im­per­son­ation, and in­ter­fer­ence with the elec­toral process.”

Aris­ing out of these re­ports, one man was held with $30,000 in cash in St Joseph around 10 am.

Speak­ing with Guardian Me­dia as she ex­it­ed the Tu­na­puna Po­lice Sta­tion with As­sis­tant Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice, Crime, Richard Smith, Mar­tin said there was no ev­i­dence to cor­rob­o­rate claims the mon­ey had been in­tend­ed to pay off vot­ers.

In­stead, she con­firmed the sus­pect could not ac­count for how he had come to be in pos­ses­sion of the cash, and he re­port­ed­ly re­fused to re­veal ex­act­ly what it was to be used for.

Guardian Me­dia was lat­er told that the Fi­nan­cial In­ves­ti­ga­tions Branch (FIB) had been called in to as­sist and had seized the cash.

Mar­tin as­sured, “We take all al­le­ga­tions of in­tim­i­da­tion and elec­toral of­fences very se­ri­ous­ly.”

She warned, “Any at­tempt to in­ter­fere with a cit­i­zen’s right to vote freely and with­out fear strikes at the very heart of our democ­ra­cy and will not be tol­er­at­ed.”

Mar­tin en­cour­aged mem­bers of the pub­lic to re­port any in­ci­dents of vot­er in­tim­i­da­tion and oth­er elec­toral-day of­fences, as she said the TTPS was ready to pur­sue all re­ports.

She warned, “The TTPS will re­main on high alert in the com­ing days to en­sure law and or­der are main­tained through­out the coun­try.”

An­oth­er in­ci­dent yes­ter­day cen­tred around the search for a sus­pect who was al­leged­ly of­fer­ing peo­ple $1,000 to with­hold their vote.

The po­lice con­firmed in­for­ma­tion had been giv­en to them that peo­ple in the Mt Lam­bert/Mt D’or area had been ap­proached by the sus­pect, who had been of­fer­ing cash in ex­change for hold­ing on­to their na­tion­al iden­ti­fi­ca­tion cards, which would have been re­turned to them af­ter the polls closed at 6 pm.

Se­nior of­fi­cers said they were still search­ing for the sus­pect up to last evening.