An­na-Lisa Paul

Se­nior Re­porter

an­na-lisa.paul@guardian.co.tt

Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice (CoP) Al­lis­ter Gue­var­ro is de­fend­ing near­ly $800 mil­lion in over­time pay­ments made by the Trinidad and To­ba­go Po­lice Ser­vice (TTPS) be­tween 2024 and 2026, ar­gu­ing that the ex­pen­di­ture was both nec­es­sary and jus­ti­fied in light of sig­nif­i­cant re­duc­tions in crime and is like­ly to con­tin­ue as the ser­vice con­tin­ues its fight against the crim­i­nal el­e­ment.

In a video state­ment re­leased yes­ter­day, Gue­var­ro said the drop in crim­i­nal ac­tiv­i­ty demon­strat­ed that of­fi­cers had been work­ing ef­fec­tive­ly de­spite on­go­ing man­pow­er chal­lenges.

“At present, the TTPS is op­er­at­ing with a 22 per cent short­age of of­fi­cers while main­tain­ing an op­er­a­tional tem­po that sta­tis­tics show has pushed crime back to lev­els not seen since 2007,” Gue­var­ro said.

De­scrib­ing the achieve­ment as near­ly two decades in the mak­ing, Gue­var­ro said, “We were able to achieve this with­out re­strict­ing leave.”

He said the or­gan­i­sa­tion had been forced to do more with few­er per­son­nel, but ac­knowl­edged that main­tain­ing height­ened op­er­a­tions came at a sub­stan­tial cost.

“We were able to in­crease op­er­a­tional tem­po, so ob­vi­ous­ly we will in­cur over­time,” Gue­var­ro said.

“We cur­rent­ly have a mass re­cruit­ment ex­er­cise and, as we be­gin to see more po­lice of­fi­cers be­ing brought on board, we will see a com­men­su­rate drop in the need for over­time.”

De­spite the ex­pense, he main­tained that the ad­di­tion­al spend­ing was nec­es­sary to en­sure pub­lic safe­ty.

“It is a nec­es­sary mea­sure to en­sure that cit­i­zens of this coun­try are safer,” he said.

Gue­var­ro not­ed that an­nu­al over­time ex­pen­di­ture with­in the TTPS has his­tor­i­cal­ly av­er­aged about $400 mil­lion.

Hint­ing that over­time costs are like­ly to con­tin­ue in the months ahead, he as­sured the pub­lic that po­lice op­er­a­tions would not be scaled back dur­ing the busy Christ­mas and Car­ni­val pe­ri­ods.

“As we ap­proach Christ­mas and Car­ni­val, we will not be eas­ing up on our op­er­a­tions,” he said.

He added, “We will not al­low crim­i­nals to erode the gains we have made. We will con­tin­ue to fight the crim­i­nal scourge that has in­fect­ed our coun­try and live up to our vi­sion of mak­ing every place in Trinidad and To­ba­go safe.”

The com­ments came af­ter at­tor­ney Keron Ramkha­lawan called for an in­de­pen­dent au­dit of TTPS over­time pay­ments on Thurs­day, af­ter the fig­ures were dis­closed by the TTPS. This came fol­low­ing a Free­dom of In­for­ma­tion (FOI) re­quest filed by Ramkha­lawan on be­half of cit­i­zen Vishal Per­sad.

Per­sad has ar­gued that the grow­ing over­time bill rais­es se­ri­ous con­cerns about staffing, ac­count­abil­i­ty and the man­age­ment of po­lice re­sources.

In a state­ment is­sued on Thurs­day, Ramkha­lawan said, “Over­time is meant to be the ex­cep­tion, not the rule.”

Ac­cord­ing to of­fi­cial TTPS fig­ures, $793.89 mil­lion was paid in over­time be­tween Jan­u­ary 2024 and Au­gust 2026.

The an­nu­al bill rose from $233.87 mil­lion in 2024 to $276.84 mil­lion in 2025, while over­time pay­ments for the first eight months of 2026 had al­ready reached $283.19 mil­lion.

Ramkha­lawan said Per­sad was par­tic­u­lar­ly con­cerned about how over­time was be­ing au­tho­rised, man­aged and paid.

While Gue­var­ro did not iden­ti­fy any in­di­vid­ual crit­ics in his state­ment, Ramkha­lawan quick­ly de­fend­ed both him­self and his client.

“The rule of law re­quires all pub­lic of­fi­cials to be trans­par­ent and ac­count­able, es­pe­cial­ly when it comes to mil­lions of tax­pay­ers’ dol­lars,” he said.

He al­so de­fend­ed the FOI re­quest, adding, “At no ma­te­r­i­al time did the FOIA ap­pli­cant at­tempt to in­di­cate to the pub­lic or the me­dia that the Com­mis­sion­er made any over­time pay­ments him­self.”