Fis­cal pru­dence is what led the po­lice ser­vice to award a con­tract to the T&T Air Sup­port Co Ltd (TTASC) to sup­ply two light sport air­craft to help in crime-fight­ing. This was the ex­pla­na­tion giv­en by act­ing po­lice com­mis­sion­er Jack Ewats­ki in a state­ment yes­ter­day about the two Zenith CH 750 Air Scout air­craft the po­lice are leas­ing from the TTASC for a three-month eval­u­a­tion for $902,772. Ewats­ki's state­ment comes af­ter heavy fire from the PNM Op­po­si­tion in Par­lia­ment last week. Op­po­si­tion MPs Don­na Cox and Colm Im­bert charged that the air­craft were "dol­ly­house" and "toy" aero­planes, not suit­ed for air sur­veil­lance and a waste of tax­pay­ers' dol­lars.

Ewats­ki, dis­put­ing this, dis­closed that the light air­craft was deemed the best for their plan to use an air unit to sup­port ground forces. "In April 2011, the Trinidad and To­ba­go Po­lice Ser­vice (TTPS) com­menced an Air Sup­port Unit pi­lot project as part of the 21st Cen­tu­ry Polic­ing trans­for­ma­tion ini­tia­tive," he said. "The goal of this pi­lot project was to mea­sure the ef­fec­tive­ness of aer­i­al sup­port to TTPS ground op­er­a­tions in the realm of law en­force­ment avi­a­tion. "The Air Sup­port Unit, us­ing the for­mer Spe­cial An­ti-crime Unit of T&T (SAUTT) he­li­copters, con­duct­ed reg­u­lar pa­trols over all parts of Trinidad of­ten iden­ti­fy­ing sus­pi­cious ac­tiv­i­ties on the ground. "Rapid re­sponse to re­port­ed crimes in progress re­sult­ed in the ap­pre­hen­sion of 178 sus­pects, the seizure of firearms, am­mu­ni­tion and nar­cotics.

"In ad­di­tion, it gave the abil­i­ty to pro­vide ground re­sources with con­sid­er­able sit­u­a­tion­al aware­ness which proved ex­treme­ly valu­able dur­ing many po­lice op­er­a­tions." Ewats­ki said the cost of he­li­copters led to re­search in­to less ex­pen­sive forms of aer­i­al sup­port. "Recog­nis­ing the fact that op­er­a­tional costs of he­li­copters are sig­nif­i­cant, re­search was con­duct­ed in­to oth­er forms of aer­i­al sup­port that might pro­vide sim­i­lar ca­pa­bil­i­ties at re­duced op­er­at­ing and main­te­nance costs," he said. "This re­search in­clud­ed con­tact with the In­ter­na­tion­al Law En­force­ment Avi­a­tion As­so­ci­a­tion, as well as avi­a­tion ex­perts, both lo­cal­ly and for­eign."

Ewats­ki said in­quiries re­vealed that a new­ly-formed lo­cal com­pa­ny, the Trinidad & To­ba­go Air Sup­port Com­pa­ny Ltd, was in the process of ac­quir­ing a num­ber of these types of air­craft. He said it was learnt that tech­nol­o­gy used in the SAUTT he­li­copter fleet could be ac­com­mo­dat­ed in the light sport air­craft. No oth­er avi­a­tion en­ti­ty in the coun­try had that type of air­craft in their fleet, he not­ed. He said dis­cus­sions took place be­tween the po­lice and the TTASC, which re­sult­ed in a pro­pos­al be­ing con­sid­ered by Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice Dwayne Gibbs to en­ter in­to a ser­vice agree­ment with the com­pa­ny for 12 weeks as a pi­lot project to eval­u­ate the ca­pa­bil­i­ty of this type of air­craft.

"On De­cem­ber 29, 2011, a con­tract was signed by the CoP, un­der his au­thor­i­ty as Ac­count­ing Of­fi­cer for the ser­vice, with the com­pa­ny to pro­vide a min­i­mum of 720 hours of air­craft use for the to­tal sum of US$140,440." Ewats­ki stressed that the con­tract clear­ly stat­ed that the air­craft were be­ing leased for eval­u­a­tion, with no com­mit­ment to any fur­ther busi­ness en­gage­ment. "It is planned to care­ful­ly eval­u­ate the ca­pa­bil­i­ty of this type of air­craft as part of an over­all strat­e­gy to es­tab­lish the Air Sup­port Unit as a per­ma­nent en­ti­ty with­in the TTPS at the low­est pos­si­ble cost," the state­ment quot­ed Ewats­ki as say­ing.