The San Fer­nan­do Po­lice Sta­tion seemed set on Tues­day to be­come ground ze­ro for a con­fronta­tion be­tween rank-and-file po­lice of­fi­cers and po­lice lead­er­ship on ques­tions of de­te­ri­o­rat­ing in­fra­struc­ture.Top-lev­el in­ter­ven­tion by act­ing Com­mis­sion­er Stephen Williams and their leader's promise to ad­dress health and safe­ty con­cerns with­in six weeks pla­cat­ed of­fi­cers who were ready to quit a build­ing they claim is over­crowd­ed and in­fest­ed with bats and ro­dents.

Oth­er sta­tions at La Brea, Rox­bor­ough and St Joseph are al­so suf­fer­ing from se­vere de­te­ri­o­ra­tion.It's not as if the gov­ern­ment isn't aware of the sit­u­a­tion. In Au­gust 2012, soon af­ter tak­ing of­fice as Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter, Jack Warn­er toured sev­er­al po­lice sta­tions and de­clared those at Moru­ga and La Brea to be "dis­as­ters." Mr Warn­er apol­o­gised open­ly to po­lice based at the Moru­ga, La Brea and Oropouche sta­tions for the con­di­tions at their sta­tions.

At that time, a $291 mil­lion pro­gramme was un­der way at eight of the most se­vere­ly di­lap­i­dat­ed sta­tions, with the projects sched­uled to run for be­tween 12 and 15 months.What's been hap­pen­ing since? Why is it nec­es­sary for the work­ing con­di­tions of the po­lice ser­vice to reach this point be­fore any ac­tion is tak­en? And what's been hap­pen­ing with po­lice ve­hi­cles?

On Mon­day CoP Williams ac­knowl­edged that "many" of the 1,281 ve­hi­cles al­lo­cat­ed for po­lice use were out of com­mis­sion, some be­ing re­paired, oth­ers ready to be auc­tioned.The T&T Po­lice Ser­vice needs 1,600 ve­hi­cles and the fleet com­ple­ment seems to be falling sig­nif­i­cant­ly short of that.Last May, for­mer Deputy Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Jack Ewats­ki not­ed that 300 ve­hi­cles of the 1,200 then avail­able to po­lice were out of ser­vice. The Ve­hi­cle Man­age­ment Cor­po­ra­tion was then re­pair­ing ve­hi­cles at a rate of 15 per day.

The po­lice ser­vice us­es show­room-floor com­mer­cial ve­hi­cles, and ac­cord­ing to Com­mis­sion­er Williams, such cars last be­tween five and sev­en years in the ser­vice."These ve­hi­cles are used in chas­es and in high-pres­sure sit­u­a­tions, so of course there will be a large num­ber of ac­ci­dents and ve­hi­cle main­te­nance will be high," Mr Williams ex­plained.

The 2013 Pub­lic Sec­tor In­vest­ment Pro­gramme doc­u­ment for 2013-2015 calls for po­lice ve­hi­cles that are "fit for pur­pose" and "stur­dy enough for po­lice use," but those ad­di­tions to the fleet have not been made yet and ac­cord­ing to the com­mis­sion­er, "it is not an im­me­di­ate ac­tiv­i­ty that we are look­ing at."

It re­mains un­clear whether the act­ing CoP shares the view of Mr Ewats­ki that ac­count­abil­i­ty for the care of ve­hi­cles should be­gin with the of­fi­cers who use them and that prop­er fleet man­age­ment should em­pha­sise such re­spon­si­bil­i­ty.Clear­ly po­lice of­fi­cers should not be ex­pect­ed to per­form their du­ties in haz­ardous con­di­tions, but spend­ing on in­fra­struc­ture to sup­port more ef­fec­tive po­lice work should be matched by greater ac­count­abil­i­ty on the part of of­fi­cers for the as­sets en­trust­ed to their care.

Both should be pur­sued in par­al­lel, so that the po­lice ser­vice is prop­er­ly equipped and tax­pay­ers as­sured that spend­ing on these as­sets is pro­tect­ed by a lev­el of user re­spon­si­bil­i­ty for the val­ue of that in­vest­ment.