Akash Sama­roo

Mem­bers of the pub­lic can once again re­ceive a Cer­tifi­cate of Char­ac­ter (CoC) from the Trinidad and To­ba­go Po­lice Ser­vice (TTPS).

On March 16, Deputy Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice (DCP) Curt Si­mon said the “tech­ni­cal mat­ter” which led to the break­down of the Au­to­mat­ed Fin­ger­print Iden­ti­fi­ca­tion Sys­tem (AFIS) would have been rec­ti­fied by March 22 to bring about some “tem­po­rary re­lief.”

TTPS Pub­lic In­for­ma­tion Of­fi­cer, In­spec­tor Michelle Lewis told Guardian Me­dia that AFIS was ful­ly func­tion­al once again and CoC’s can be gen­er­at­ed now.

Lewis added that what is in place now is not “tem­po­rary re­lief” but rather the en­tire sys­tem is func­tion­ing as it used to.

She could not tell Guardian Me­dia what the “tech­ni­cal mat­ter” was which led to the mal­func­tion, but she said lo­cal and in­ter­na­tion­al tech­ni­cians worked on rec­ti­fy­ing the prob­lem.

The TTPS said CoC’s could not have been is­sued since Feb­ru­ary 14, 2023.

The AFIS al­so mal­func­tioned for sev­er­al months in 2022. At the time, the TTPS de­scribed it as a sys­tems mal­func­tion.

Guardian Me­dia asked if a so­lu­tion was found that will lessen the down time when there are tech­ni­cal is­sues how­ev­er, we did not get a re­sponse to that ques­tion.

Ac­cord­ing to the TTPS, a Cer­tifi­cate of Char­ac­ter is an of­fi­cial doc­u­ment is­sued by the Trinidad and To­ba­go Po­lice Ser­vice which states whether a per­son has any pre­vi­ous con­vic­tions record­ed against him/her.

A cit­i­zen of Trinidad and To­ba­go or of any for­eign coun­try who pre­vi­ous­ly lived in Trinidad and To­ba­go may ap­ply for a Cer­tifi­cate of Char­ac­ter.

The TTPS’ of­fi­cial web­site re­minds ap­pli­cants that all Cer­tifi­cate of Char­ac­ter ap­pli­ca­tions are to be made on­line on the TTPS web­site on­ly, and not at any po­lice sta­tions.

While com­plet­ing the Cer­tifi­cate of Char­ac­ter Re­quest Form, ap­pli­cants will be able to choose the date of their ap­point­ment and the pre­ferred po­lice sta­tion they wish to vis­it to have their fin­ger­prints tak­en.

The ap­pli­cant is re­spon­si­ble for print­ing their own ap­pli­ca­tion forms on le­gal size pa­per and bring­ing it to the po­lice sta­tion on the day of their ap­point­ment.

The Cer­tifi­cate of Char­ac­ter pro­cess­ing fee is $50, which is to be paid at the po­lice sta­tion on the day of the ap­point­ment.