The Trinidad and To­ba­go Po­lice Ser­vice So­cial and Wel­fare As­so­ci­a­tion (TTPSS­WA) has raised con­cerns about grow­ing of­fi­cer burnout, staff short­ages and pro­longed de­lays in pro­mo­tions, warn­ing that the is­sues are af­fect­ing morale with­in the po­lice ser­vice.

Speak­ing on CNC3’s The Morn­ing Brew pro­gramme yes­ter­day, TTPSS­WA as­sis­tant sec­re­tary Sgt (Ag) Tri­cia Du­rant-Charles said many of­fi­cers are ex­pe­ri­enc­ing phys­i­cal and men­tal ex­haus­tion af­ter years of be­ing re­quired to go be­yond their nor­mal du­ties.

“It’s a men­tal and phys­i­cal strain on your body, and what has been hap­pen­ing over the years, be­cause of­fi­cers have been called out to go above and be­yond their call of du­ty, you’re get­ting that lev­el of burnout with of­fi­cers. Now, the Com­mis­sion­er has start­ed to put mech­a­nisms in place to deal with some of the is­sues that of­fi­cers are fac­ing, but as fast as you give an of­fi­cer leave or you give him time to re­al­ly catch him­self, we have oth­er func­tions,” Du­rant-Charles said.

The as­so­ci­a­tion said the sit­u­a­tion has been com­pound­ed by de­lays in the pro­mo­tion process.

While the Gov­ern­ment has ap­proved an in­crease in the Trinidad and To­ba­go Po­lice Ser­vice’s sanc­tioned strength, progress has been slowed by le­gal dis­putes be­fore the courts that have ef­fec­tive­ly frozen pro­mo­tions across sev­er­al ranks.

Du­rant-Charles said the pro­longed un­cer­tain­ty has left many of­fi­cers de­mo­ti­vat­ed, par­tic­u­lar­ly those who have spent years act­ing in se­nior po­si­tions with­out con­fir­ma­tion.

She said some of­fi­cers who lose act­ing ap­point­ments of­ten strug­gle to ad­just af­ter be­ing re­turned to low­er ranks de­spite hav­ing car­ried out high­er-lev­el re­spon­si­bil­i­ties.

“I can say that most of­fi­cers feel de­mo­ti­vat­ed be­cause some­times you tend to lose your act­ing and hav­ing to ex­pe­ri­ence that where you were once in a po­si­tion of au­thor­i­ty in terms of su­per­vi­so­ry po­si­tion and now you are back to a con­sta­ble. Then it caus­es that rift be­tween the su­per­vi­sor that is there now and you per­form­ing your role,” Du­rant-Charles said.

She said the as­so­ci­a­tion con­tin­ues to pro­vide coun­selling and wel­fare sup­port to of­fi­cers deal­ing with stress and burnout but main­tained that broad­er struc­tur­al chal­lenges, in­clud­ing staffing short­ages and stalled pro­mo­tions, re­quire ur­gent at­ten­tion.