Shane Su­perville

Se­nior Re­porter

shane.su­perville@guardian.co.tt

Polic­ing has typ­i­cal­ly been con­sid­ered a de­mand­ing and out­right dan­ger­ous job, but more peo­ple are be­ing asked to an­swer the call to serve as the TTPS seeks to grow its ranks over the next five years.

On May 16, Min­is­ter of Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty Roger Alexan­der an­nounced that the Gov­ern­ment aims to hire 2,316 new po­lice of­fi­cers, rais­ing the man­pow­er strength of the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice (TTPS) to 10,200. Last Wednes­day, the TTPS post­ed a link to an on­line book­let with Fre­quent­ly Asked Ques­tions about the re­cruit­ment process and cri­te­ria on their so­cial me­dia ac­counts.

The de­ci­sion, while tout­ed as en­hanc­ing the op­er­a­tional ef­fec­tive­ness of the TTPS, was crit­i­cised by some, who ques­tioned whether sim­ply hav­ing more po­lice of­fi­cers would be enough to achieve crime-fight­ing goals.

But be­fore the ef­fec­tive­ness of a larg­er TTPS can be as­sessed, the ser­vice must first at­tract suit­able can­di­dates at a time when polic­ing faces grow­ing scruti­ny over ac­count­abil­i­ty, pub­lic trust, time­ly pro­mo­tions, equip­ment short­ages and work­place pres­sures in­ten­si­fied by suc­ces­sive states of emer­gency (SoEs).

For 25-year-old Joel Vi­dale, join­ing the TTPS isn’t sim­ply a means of earn­ing a liv­ing, as he hopes to change the per­cep­tion of law en­force­ment in his En­ter­prise, Ch­agua­nas, home­town.

“In the com­mu­ni­ty, it have a lot of chal­lenges like gangs, crime, drugs ... a lot of dif­fer­ent things in the com­mu­ni­ty.

“For me, join­ing the TTPS would be a way to help my­self and oth­ers at the same time.”

Vi­dale is in the process of ap­ply­ing to join the po­lice ser­vice and, if suc­cess­ful, will like­ly be among the first batch of 2,316 re­cruits as part of a new cam­paign to boost the num­bers of the TTPS.

Ac­cord­ing to da­ta from the TTPS Cor­po­rate Com­mu­ni­ca­tions Unit, the num­ber of trainees un­der­go­ing train­ing at the po­lice train­ing acad­e­my has re­mained rel­a­tive­ly con­sis­tent over the past two years.

In Batch 1 of 2023, there were 162 trainees. In Batch 1 of 2024, there were 110; Batch 2 of that year con­sist­ed of 96, while Batch­es 3 and 4 con­tained 88 and 70, re­spec­tive­ly.

Ad­di­tion­al da­ta re­vealed that Batch 1 of 2025 com­prised 126 trainees, while Batch 2 of 2025 was still un­der­go­ing train­ing at the time of this sto­ry.

The de­ci­sion to hire more of­fi­cers has come at a par­tic­u­lar­ly chal­leng­ing time in lo­cal polic­ing his­to­ry, as T&T is now in the midst of its third SoE in as many years.

It is al­so fac­ing calls for more ac­count­abil­i­ty on the part of its of­fi­cers fol­low­ing the po­lice-in­volved killing of Joshua Sama­roo and the wound­ing of Ka­ia Sealy in Jan­u­ary, which trig­gered a se­ries of protests.

But Vi­dale said he isn’t dis­cour­aged by the per­cep­tion of the po­lice, as he sees these chal­lenges as a chance for him and oth­er young peo­ple to start a new nar­ra­tive about pro­tect­ing and serv­ing.

“There may be so many bad views about be­ing a po­lice on what­ev­er views are go­ing on in Trinidad at the time, there’s so much go­ing on that some­times you need a fa­mil­iar face who you can trust and un­der­stand.

“That way I can get in­for­ma­tion and build the strength and bond with­in the com­mu­ni­ty.”

De­spite his op­ti­mism, Vi­dale said he al­so un­der­stands the pub­lic’s con­cern over the con­duct of some po­lice of­fi­cers and the ef­fects this can have on their abil­i­ty to co-op­er­ate with and trust the TTPS as an en­ti­ty.

“In­ci­dents hap­pen. I my­self know peo­ple who were mis­tak­en­ly iden­ti­fied as oth­er peo­ple dur­ing in­ter­ac­tions with the po­lice. For me, I would just try to put my­self in that sit­u­a­tion and try to help.

“I don’t think the cit­i­zens would un­der­stand every­thing they see, or the po­lice would un­der­stand every­thing they see.”

An­oth­er as­pir­ing po­lice of­fi­cer, who asked to be iden­ti­fied on­ly as Kim­ber­ly, al­so ac­knowl­edged the need for po­lice of­fi­cers to en­gage with the pub­lic they serve, as she has seen first­hand the fail­ure of some of­fi­cers to de-es­ca­late volatile sit­u­a­tions.

“There have been a cou­ple of times I have seen some of­fi­cers take ad­van­tage of their roles in sit­u­a­tions where you can just talk to some­one.

“In­stead of do­ing that, you make it more phys­i­cal and ag­gres­sive and the youths you con­fronting will re­sist and the en­tire thing will es­ca­late out of a sim­ple mis­un­der­stand­ing.”

For this rea­son, Kim­ber­ly said she hopes that as the TTPS grows, more em­pha­sis can be placed on cus­tomer ser­vice train­ing, con­flict res­o­lu­tion and de-es­ca­la­tion tac­tics for the next gen­er­a­tion of po­lice of­fi­cers.

A Princes Town na­tive, Kim­ber­ly said her neigh­bour­hood has al­so been af­fect­ed by crime, which part­ly in­spired her de­ci­sion to ap­ply to join the TTPS.

Young women mind­ful of work­place dy­nam­ics

But Kim­ber­ly, 26, said that the risk of con­fronting crim­i­nals isn’t the on­ly con­cern for young women con­sid­er­ing a ca­reer in polic­ing, as she re­called the ap­pre­hen­sion some rel­a­tives had when she an­nounced her de­ci­sion to join the TTPS.

“It has a lot of things that fe­males deal with that we don’t re­al­ly speak about ... how the se­niors treat the fe­male staff and stuff like that.

“I guess they were wor­ried about how I would han­dle a sit­u­a­tion like that, but I know what my job would be and what it wouldn’t be, so I would take the nec­es­sary steps and pre­cau­tions to make sure every­thing goes smooth­ly.

“I would not give in to peer pres­sure and stuff like that. That’s not me.”

Re­spond­ing to these con­cerns, pres­i­dent of the TTPS So­cial Wel­fare As­so­ci­a­tion (TTPSS­WA) act­ing ASP Ish­mael Pitt ac­knowl­edged that while there may be in­ap­pro­pri­ate re­la­tion­ships and con­duct be­tween col­leagues, he was con­fi­dent that suf­fi­cient mea­sures were in place to pre­vent abus­es of au­thor­i­ty while main­tain­ing pro­fes­sion­al­ism with­in the ser­vice.

“I can tell you there are sys­tems in place and once any im­prop­er ad­vances are made, they (young of­fi­cers) have the op­por­tu­ni­ty to have the in­ci­dent re­port­ed, in­ves­ti­gat­ed and ap­pro­pri­ate ac­tion tak­en.

“I think we have come a long way in terms of our abil­i­ty to po­lice our­selves and for that rea­son any of­fi­cer ... any se­nior of­fi­cer who steps out of what is pro­ce­du­ral­ly cor­rect, what is legal­ly ac­cept­ed ... then he or she will be made to ac­count once a re­port is made and once the per­son who made the re­port is will­ing to go the dis­tance to en­sure that ac­count­abil­i­ty takes place.”

“So I don’t think a per­son should use that or see it as a de­ter­rent in join­ing the po­lice ser­vice.

“I know just re­cent­ly we had our first fe­male Com­mis­sion­er (of Po­lice), so not on­ly do we have a large com­ple­ment of fe­male po­lice of­fi­cers, they are al­so ex­celling in mov­ing up the ranks.”