The Trinidad and To­ba­go Po­lice Ser­vice says to re­duce the like­li­hood of ir­reg­u­lar­i­ties and dis­crep­an­cies, it is reeval­u­at­ing and ro­bust­ly mon­i­tor­ing its poli­cies and pro­ce­dures re­gard­ing the ex­tra du­ty arrange­ments with fete pro­mot­ers and event or­gan­is­ers.

The TTPS’ an­nounce­ment came af­ter Act­ing Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice Mc­Don­ald Ja­cob, and oth­er se­nior of­fi­cers, met with the ex­ec­u­tive of the Trinidad and To­ba­go Pro­mot­ers’ As­so­ci­a­tion at the Po­lice Ad­min­is­tra­tion Build­ing last Sat­ur­day.

Ac­cord­ing to the TTPS, the par­ties came to an agree­ment that they will work to­geth­er to es­tab­lish and ad­here to a clear pol­i­cy; will re­solve the strength of po­lice of­fi­cers at events; and will en­sure fu­ture col­lab­o­ra­tion to en­hance the re­la­tion­ship be­tween both or­gan­i­sa­tions ahead of Car­ni­val 2023.

“CoP (Ag.) Ja­cob told the TTPA that the TTPS will im­ple­ment fur­ther guide­lines to what was al­ready out­lined in the TTPS’ Ex­tra Du­ty Pol­i­cy to ad­dress some of the crit­i­cal chal­lenges raised by the As­so­ci­a­tion,” a press re­lease is­sued on Tues­day stat­ed.

In re­sponse, TTPA Spokesper­son Pi­age De Leon said the as­so­ci­a­tion was ‘pleased with the dis­cus­sions.’

Both en­ti­ties, ac­cord­ing to the TTPS re­lease, will meet in the fu­ture as poli­cies are re­viewed and mon­i­tored.

On Ju­ly 24, the Sun­day Guardian re­port­ed on claims by pro­mot­ers that in the ab­sence of a clear pol­i­cy to de­ter­mine the num­ber of po­lice of­fi­cers re­quired at fetes and events, some di­vi­sion­al heads were mak­ing un­rea­son­able de­mands of the num­bers of po­lice of­fi­cers re­quired at the venue, re­sult­ing in high costs to pro­mot­ers.

Pro­mot­er sources al­so al­leged that there was no ac­count­abil­i­ty for the num­ber of po­lice of­fi­cers who ac­tu­al­ly showed up for ex­tra du­ty at the fetes, mean­ing that there was a pos­si­bil­i­ty that ghost po­lice of­fi­cers were op­er­at­ing for the un­eth­i­cal prof­it of oth­er of­fi­cers.

The TTPS re­spond­ed to the ar­ti­cle say­ing its se­nior of­fi­cers can­not ‘willy -nil­ly make de­mands of a pro­mot­er for any sums of mon­ey as pay­ment for ex­tra du­ty.’

The ser­vice in­sist­ed that there was an out­lined process, with ac­count­abil­i­ty.

In the Sun­day Guardian sto­ry, pro­mot­ers claimed that they were charged as much as $100,000 to $200,000 by TTPS of­fi­cers to of­fer se­cu­ri­ty at their events.