Jensen La Vende    

Se­nior Re­porter-In­ves­tiga­tive    

jensen.lavende@guardian.co.tt    

Around 4 am on April 25, a Pe­nal fam­i­ly woke up to the shout of “po­lice” by men dressed in po­lice tac­ti­cal wear who then barged in­to their home.

They were not po­lice.  

The four men were killers.

They dragged three men out of their beds and ex­e­cut­ed them be­fore flee­ing.  

The mur­ders of Anand Ku­mar, 42, his son Kishore Ku­mar, 18, and their rel­a­tive Rol­ley Ho­sein, 26, at their home in, Char­lo Vil­lage, Pe­nal, is one of many har­row­ing sto­ries of men, dressed in po­lice cloth­ing, com­mit­ting heinous acts.  

It was not the first time that po­lice re­ceived re­ports that men wear­ing clothes with an un­can­ny re­sem­blance to their uni­forms, in­clud­ing de­tach­able “PO­LICE” stick­ers and the po­lice em­blem, robbed, kid­napped, shot and mur­dered cit­i­zens while cam­ou­flaged as those sworn to pro­tect and serve.  

In Au­gust last year, the home of busi­ness­man Ra­jen­dra Maye, own­er of the Dou­ble Palm chain of ho­tels and R Maye Hard­ware was robbed.

Four men in full tac­ti­cal wear, in­clud­ing bul­let­proof vests with “PO­LICE” stick­ers, “ar­rest­ed” two work­men be­fore forc­ing their way in­side.

His fam­i­ly, who was home at the time, called him and said that po­lice want­ed to search his home. He ad­vised them not to let the “of­fi­cers” in as he was as­sured they were not po­lice.

The men es­caped with an undis­closed sum of cash and valu­ables. The case re­mains un­solved

In a tele­phone in­ter­view with Guardian Me­dia last Thurs­day, Maye said he lost all con­fi­dence in the po­lice af­ter his or­deal.  

“Hon­est­ly speak­ing, I have no con­fi­dence in the po­lice ser­vice be­cause of this in­ci­dent,” Maye said, adding that he re­lo­cat­ed his fam­i­ly af­ter the rob­bery, and they re­main anx­ious even in a gat­ed and se­cure com­mu­ni­ty.

He said while he be­lieves the four men were not po­lice of­fi­cers, the fact that a po­lice sta­tion, five min­utes away, took over 30 min­utes to re­spond was not re­as­sur­ing.

At a town hall meet­ing on No­vem­ber 28, a week af­ter ban­dits dressed in po­lice uni­form stormed a house on Ra­goo­nanan Road, Cunu­pia, of­fi­cers ad­vised cit­i­zens to seek iden­ti­fi­ca­tion from any of­fi­cer want­i­ng to en­ter their homes. One of­fi­cer ad­vised that in in­stances where pos­si­ble le­git­i­mate of­fi­cers refuse to iden­ti­fy them­selves us­ing their badges, then they should com­ply.  

Res­i­dents begged for some­thing to be done as the in­ci­dent left them feel­ing un­set­tled.

Guardian Me­dia emailed a list of ques­tions to the TTPS’ cor­po­rate com­mu­ni­ca­tions unit on No­vem­ber 13 ask­ing for in­for­ma­tion on the is­sue of po­lice ap­par­el seized from crim­i­nals and plans to change the TTPS’ uni­form. Up to De­cem­ber 7, no re­sponse was giv­en.  

How easy it is to get po­lice-is­sued ap­par­el

But how do crim­i­nals so eas­i­ly get their hands on po­lice-is­sued ap­par­el?  

As part of an in­ves­ti­ga­tion by Guardian Me­dia, one of­fi­cer, through a third par­ty, was ready, will­ing and ob­vi­ous­ly able to sup­ply the Sun­day Guardian with a po­lice-is­sued tac­ti­cal uni­form.    

Be­fore the ne­go­ti­a­tions reached costs, the of­fi­cer re­scind­ed his of­fer, not for a burst of moral­i­ty but he be­came fear­ful as some of his col­leagues were held for an un­re­lat­ed of­fence and the tim­ing was not right.

Mul­ti­ple po­lice sources con­firmed that the po­lice ser­vice’s stores de­part­ment, lo­cat­ed on Wright­son Road, was once a gold­mine for ac­cess­ing po­lice uni­forms.  

Uni­forms that were too old or had to be re­turned be­cause the of­fi­cer was in­ter­dict­ed or re­tired would be brought to the stores de­part­ment and, thanks to very lit­tle su­per­vi­sion and a pen­chant for easy mon­ey, civil­ians would keep some of the uni­forms meant to be de­stroyed and sell them.    

Of­fi­cers with in­ti­mate knowl­edge of the in­ci­dents said the mat­ter was nev­er ad­dressed through the court sys­tem as the po­lice store work­ers were re­placed or re-lo­cat­ed.  

An­oth­er method would be pur­chas­ing from le­git­i­mate stores that sup­ply tac­ti­cal wear to not on­ly po­lice but al­so se­cu­ri­ty com­pa­nies. Cus­tomers can walk off the streets, cash in hand, and walk out with a shirt and pants iden­ti­cal to the tac­ti­cal wear of po­lice, with­out the em­blem or “PO­LICE” stick­er. That, sources said, must come from with­in the po­lice ser­vice or a tai­lor/seam­stress with the skill set and inkling for the crime.  

A tac­ti­cal uni­form costs be­tween $800 to $1,200 in these stores de­pend­ing on the brand, po­lice said.

Sec­tion 62 of the Po­lice Ser­vice Act states that any­one who, with­out the con­sent of the Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er, puts on, ei­ther in whole or in part of the uni­form or in any way pre­tends to be a po­lice of­fi­cer, is li­able on sum­ma­ry con­vic­tion to a fine of $30,000 and im­pris­on­ment for three years.  

Dif­fer­ent uni­forms, same kha­ki pants  

Dur­ing his tenure, Cana­di­an po­lice com­mis­sion­er Dwayne Gibbs in his 21st Cen­tu­ry Polic­ing ini­tia­tive sought to change the blue pants and grey shirt to more cli­mate-friend­ly cloth­ing.  

In May 2012, then na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty min­is­ter John Sandy said Cab­i­net had de­nied Gibbs’ re­quest to change the uni­form, as a pi­lot project, in the West­ern Di­vi­sion. He told Par­lia­ment that a year ear­li­er Gibbs pur­chased 1,500 shirts for $293,880, 1,000 trousers at $233,310, and in Ju­ly that year, 3,000 mo­tifs for $84,090 were bought.  

That year, then sec­re­tary of the Po­lice So­cial and Wel­fare As­so­ci­a­tion Michael Seales said in April 2011 that some $8 mil­lion was spent on new uni­forms for the po­lice. He told the me­dia then that he, how­ev­er, gave in­struc­tions to the of­fi­cers not to wear the uni­forms. These uni­forms were sup­posed to re­place the grey shirt and blue pants.  

For­mer as­so­ci­a­tion pres­i­dent Snr Supt Anand Rame­sar said the pro­posed chang­ing of the uni­forms cre­at­ed the night­mare of po­lice tac­ti­cal wear. He said that while some of­fi­cers were re­fus­ing to wear the new uni­forms, oth­ers were re­fus­ing to wear the old ones, say­ing it was too heavy and re­quired a lot of starch to en­sure it was neat.  

As a com­pro­mise, suc­ces­sive lead­ers of the po­lice ser­vice al­lowed the of­fi­cers to wear tac­ti­cal uni­forms, which were sup­posed to be used by the di­vi­sion­al task forces on­ly, even when they re­mained in a sta­tion. As time went on, more of­fi­cers donned tac­ti­cal suits and drift­ed away from the grey shirts and blue pants.  

“We would have agreed to chang­ing the uni­forms and hav­ing them em­bed­ded with ra­dio fre­quen­cy iden­ti­fi­ca­tion (RFID). That way if a uni­form goes miss­ing and you seize it you can iden­ti­fy who it be­longs to. This is a re­cur­ring prob­lem, but the po­lice ser­vice has to look at the dis­pos­al of its uni­forms” Rame­sar said.  

 The chang­ing of the uni­forms would have rein­tro­duced the kit ex­am­i­na­tion where po­lice of­fi­cers were man­dat­ed to present all items of cloth­ing is­sued to them for re­view. If any were not up to stan­dard, an of­fi­cer would be dis­ci­plined. This sys­tem would have been paired with po­lice of­fi­cers hav­ing their kit tagged so of­fi­cers were ob­lig­at­ed to ac­count for each item of cloth­ing.  

Rame­sar said that the process needs to be rein­tro­duced. He and a se­nior po­lice of­fi­cer, who did not want to be iden­ti­fied, said if this pro­ce­dure is reim­ple­ment­ed then the is­sue of po­lice-like

cloth­ing used by crim­i­nals will re­duce.

A re­cur­ring prob­lem  

Last year, Se­cu­ri­ty an­a­lyst and 868 Tac­ti­cal Lim­it­ed CEO Dirk Barnes said it was time for the TTPS to change its uni­forms as it is eas­i­ly ac­ces­si­ble.  

“What you’re talk­ing about is called a bat­tle dress uni­form top and a black bat­tle dress uni­form pants. You can go on Ama­zon, eBay or even go to any one of the tac­ti­cal sites in Trinidad and To­ba­go and buy the very same gar­ment, you don’t re­quire any kind of check. It’s used by se­cu­ri­ty com­pa­nies, it’s used by peo­ple cut­ting their grass, it is used by peo­ple who go in to play paint­ball. So, these uni­forms are eas­i­ly ac­quired and the chal­lenge here is that this is not some­thing new, the Trinidad and To­ba­go Po­lice Ser­vice, even un­der the last com­mis­sion­er, had iden­ti­fied that those uni­forms need­ed to be changed.”  

He said that with­out said changes, it is dif­fi­cult to tell the dif­fer­ence.  

Al­so com­ment­ing on fake po­lice then was act­ing po­lice com­mis­sion­er Mc Don­ald Ja­cob who said the po­lice were ex­pect­ed to speak with its sup­pli­ers with a view of re­turn­ing to the old stan­dard grey and blue uni­forms.  

An­oth­er mea­sure to com­bat the is­sue of crooks dressed as cops was to ban the use of bal­a­clavas (a close-fit­ting gar­ment cov­er­ing the whole head and neck ex­cept for parts of the face, typ­i­cal­ly made of wool). The of­fi­cers were al­so man­dat­ed to dis­play their po­lice-is­sued badges and be ac­com­pa­nied by an of­fi­cer in the reg­u­lar uni­form.  

Se­nior po­lice of­fi­cers said un­til they re­move the ease at which the av­er­age man can ac­quire cloth­ing close­ly re­sem­bling po­lice tac­ti­cal wear, the is­sue of ban­dits clad in po­lice uni­forms will re­main.  

The of­fi­cers said that the TTPS stores de­part­ment should be the sole en­ti­ty dress­ing of­fi­cers and each ar­ti­cle of cloth­ing should have the of­fi­cer’s iden­ti­fi­ca­tion num­ber to avoid in­stances of the uni­form, or cloth­ing mim­ic­k­ing the uni­form end­ing up in the hands of crim­i­nals.  

Af­ter a Cen­tral busi­ness­man’s home was bro­ken in­to last year, Ja­cob told the me­dia that con­ver­sa­tions were to be had with sup­pli­ers as there was a gang op­er­at­ing us­ing po­lice uni­forms.  

He said then, “We are or­gan­is­ing a meet­ing with our sup­pli­ers, who sup­ply the po­lice uni­form—the tac­ti­cal po­lice uni­form—and the patch­es that are nor­mal­ly used by the po­lice, like where­by when you see the patch ‘po­lice’, you know that can be placed on the back of these cloth­ing.

“We al­so have to have a meet­ing with the sup­ple­men­tal po­lice, the state po­lice, be­cause sim­i­lar­ly, the state po­lice al­so source uni­forms from these sup­pli­ers. There must be some rules in re­la­tion to how peo­ple ac­quire these uni­forms.

“ ... Our in­tent is to move away from a lot of these blue uni­forms that you are see­ing and go back to the tra­di­tion­al blue and grey uni­form. We will have spe­cialised teams us­ing it and we will look at how we can do some­thing so that per­sons can be able to iden­ti­fy the po­lice of­fi­cers.”  

Track­ing po­lice uni­forms  

In June, Sen­ate Leader Dr Amery Browne, in re­sponse to op­po­si­tion ques­tions, said that one day po­lice uni­forms will be as­cribed with the po­lice of­fi­cers’ full names and reg­i­men­tal num­bers to track them.  

He added that po­lice will al­so speak with se­cu­ri­ty com­pa­nies that have sim­i­lar uni­forms to pre­vent in­stances of the uni­forms end­ing up in the hands of crim­i­nals.    

He had told the Sen­ate, “At the out­set, it should be not­ed that while pieces of equip­ment, in­clud­ing items of uni­form, have been dis­cov­ered at crime scenes by the TTPS, bear­ing the word “PO­LICE”, or con­tain­ing mark­ings such as po­lice em­blems, not all such items are nec­es­sar­i­ly the prop­er­ty of the TTPS. Nev­er­the­less, the Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice has ad­vised that the TTPS is cur­rent­ly tak­ing sev­er­al steps to ad­dress the is­sue of po­lice equip­ment be­ing found at crime scenes.”    

Browne said apart from the uni­forms, the top cop was al­so look­ing at po­lice-is­sued am­mu­ni­tion found at crime scenes, in­clud­ing mur­der scenes. He high­light­ed five steps that are to be tak­en to pre­vent crim­i­nals clad in po­lice uni­forms from ter­ror­is­ing the coun­try.

They in­clud­ed:  

(i) Thor­ough in­ves­ti­ga­tions in­to all cas­es where these items are dis­cov­ered to de­ter­mine the own­er­ship and source of the items;    

(ii) An au­dit of all arms and am­mu­ni­tion is­sued to di­vi­sions/branch­es/sec­tions and units of the TTPS. Thus far, no ir­reg­u­lar­i­ties have been iden­ti­fied, but the process re­mains on­go­ing;    

(iii) A re-ex­am­i­na­tion of the TTPS’ pro­cure­ment prac­tices as it re­lates to the pro­cure­ment of firearms and am­mu­ni­tion;    

(iv) A re­view of its Stand­ing Or­ders re­lat­ing to the dis­tri­b­u­tion of items of uni­form, as well as the de­vel­op­ment of new strate­gies, to en­sure that po­lice of­fi­cers are com­pli­ant with the Stand­ing Or­ders; prop­er­ly se­cur­ing their items of kit and uni­form;    

(v) An au­dit of all items of uni­form is­sued, which is an­tic­i­pat­ed to be con­clud­ed in the near fu­ture.    

Se­nior po­lice of­fi­cers said the uni­forms worn by crim­i­nals may not nec­es­sar­i­ly come from po­lice of­fi­cers as se­cu­ri­ty com­pa­nies can now sell the same uni­forms with­out the in­signia. One po­lice of­fi­cer said the stores de­part­ment was “wa­tered down” al­low­ing for pri­vate com­pa­nies to clothe po­lice of­fi­cers.  

“Be­fore the po­lice got all their uni­forms from stores. Now a po­lice of­fi­cer can go in­to any store and buy pants or a jack­et be­cause many of the se­cu­ri­ty com­pa­nies have sim­i­lar-type uni­forms. When stores were in con­trol, every piece of uni­form, down to the flash­light, was marked with the of­fi­cer’s reg­i­men­tal num­ber.”

Some in­ci­dents of po­lice cloth­ing worn

in crim­i­nal acts:  

• In Sep­tem­ber, men wear­ing po­lice tac­ti­cal wear walked up to busi­ness­man Kris Ram­saran and shot him 16 times be­fore turn­ing their guns on his col­league Rishi Joseph.    

• In May Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Er­la Hare­wood-Christo­pher or­dered a probe in­to the in­ap­pro­pri­ate use of po­lice uni­forms af­ter a woman was record­ed drink­ing and lim­ing in a po­lice jack­et.  

• In April, killers wear­ing po­lice cloth­ing stormed a Pe­nal home and mur­dered Anand Ku­mar, 42, Kishore Ku­mar, 18, and Rol­ly Ho­sein, 26  

• In Feb­ru­ary last year, four men dressed as po­lice stormed the Ch­agua­nas home of a po­lice of­fi­cer and robbed her and her fam­i­ly.  

• In Au­gust last year, busi­ness­man Ra­jen­dra Maye, the own­er of the R Maye Hard­ware and Dou­ble Palm Guest House chains and Hang­gers Ex­treme Restau­rant and Bar, had his home stormed by men in po­lice cloth­ing in Au­gust last year. They es­caped with an undis­closed sum of cash and valu­ables.    

• Al­so in Au­gust last year, men in po­lice wear at­tempt­ed to kid­nap a busi­ness­man and end­ed up in a shootout with re­al po­lice who at first mis­took them for their col­leagues. The ban­dits man­aged to es­cape af­ter shoot­ing one of the of­fi­cers’ tyres.

• In 2021, po­lice of­fi­cer Na­tal­ie Pas­call, 36, was charged with mis­be­hav­iour in pub­lic of­fice af­ter a group of peo­ple were clothed in po­lice tac­ti­cal wear at a guest­house in St Ann’s. The charges stemmed from a video show­ing heav­i­ly armed peo­ple in po­lice and reg­i­ment cloth­ing parad­ing at the busi­ness place. Kyle Joseph was joint­ly charged with Pas­call.

• In Oc­to­ber 2020, a couri­er with a re­tail store was robbed of $677,277 and US$1,500, by men wear­ing po­lice uni­forms. One of the men had a ve­hi­cle marked “PO­LICE”.

• In 2018, La Brea fish­er­man Ken­ny Soogrim was kid­napped by two “po­lice of­fi­cers” who lat­er de­mand­ed a US$50,000 ran­som.  

• In 2018, men dressed as po­lice mur­dered Kurt Smith and David Charles at La Puer­ta Av­enue, Diego Mar­tin.  

• A 31-year-old Ch­agua­nas man want­ed for at­tempt­ing to rob a Ca­roni su­per­mar­ket while dressed in a fake po­lice uni­form in 2018 was held while at­tempt­ing to rob a su­per­mar­ket in Barataria.

Ac­cord­ing to the TTPS Stand­ing Or­ders 12, which cov­ers the is­su­ing, use and re­turn of po­lice uni­forms, uni­form and equip­ment/ac­ces­sories (kit) of­fi­cers must:

* Be is­sued kits at the Po­lice Stores and shall bear the reg­i­men­tal num­ber of the re­ceiv­ing of­fi­cer. The of­fi­cer must al­so sign as re­ceiv­ing the uni­form and equip­ment.  

* Kits is­sued to of­fi­cers must be main­tained against loss and/or dam­age.

The of­fi­cer whose kit has been lost, de­stroyed, dam­aged or ren­dered un­ser­vice­able, shall sub­mit a writ­ten re­port to the of­fi­cer in charge of the di­vi­sion/branch who re­ports it to the head of the Fi­nance Branch for a re­place­ment. The of­fi­cer in charge of the Fi­nance Branch can de­ter­mine if the of­fi­cer should be dis­ci­plined for los­ing his kit.

* First Di­vi­sion of­fi­cers (from the rank of as­sis­tant su­per­in­ten­dent (ASP) to com­mis­sion­er) and se­nior Sec­ond Di­vi­sion of­fi­cers are to car­ry out phys­i­cal kit in­spec­tions at least once an­nu­al­ly in every di­vi­sion with the head of every di­vi­sion hav­ing as many of­fi­cers as pos­si­ble un­der his com­mand, present for it.