Akash Sama­roo

Lead Ed­i­tor-Pol­i­tics

akash.sama­roo@cnc3.co.tt

Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar has de­fend­ed the near­ly $800 mil­lion paid to po­lice of­fi­cers in over­time over the past two years and eight months, in­sist­ing that mem­bers of the Trinidad and To­ba­go Po­lice Ser­vice (TTPS) earned every dol­lar for their ef­forts in com­bat­ing crime.

Re­spond­ing to ques­tions from Guardian Me­dia about the grow­ing over­time bill, Per­sad-Bisses­sar praised of­fi­cers for their ded­i­ca­tion, cred­it­ing their work over the past 18 months with help­ing to re­duce mur­ders and over­all crime.

“They earned every dol­lar and more for the work they have done. The mem­bers of the TTPS worked very dili­gent­ly over the last year and a half to bring mur­ders and over­all crime down,” the Prime Min­is­ter said.

Ac­cord­ing to the lat­est TTPS fig­ures, Trinidad and To­ba­go has record­ed 270 mur­ders so far in 2026, com­pared with 285 dur­ing the cor­re­spond­ing pe­ri­od in 2025.

Her de­fence of the over­time ex­pen­di­ture comes amid two States of Emer­gency (SoEs), dur­ing which po­lice of­fi­cers un­der­took in­ten­si­fied se­cu­ri­ty op­er­a­tions, in­clud­ing in­creased pa­trols, road­blocks, search­es and oth­er de­ploy­ments.

The first SoE was de­clared on Ju­ly 18, 2025, and re­mained in ef­fect un­til Jan­u­ary 31, 2026. A sec­ond was pro­claimed on March 3, 2026, and was sub­se­quent­ly ex­tend­ed.

While the emer­gency mea­sures placed ad­di­tion­al op­er­a­tional de­mands on the TTPS, the over­time records do not in­di­cate how much of the ex­pen­di­ture was di­rect­ly linked to the SoEs.

Of­fi­cial fig­ures ob­tained through a Free­dom of In­for­ma­tion (FOI) re­quest show that the TTPS paid $793.89 mil­lion in over­time be­tween Jan­u­ary 2024 and Au­gust 2026.

Of that amount, $283.19 mil­lion was paid be­tween Jan­u­ary and Au­gust this year, ex­ceed­ing the en­tire 2025 over­time ex­pen­di­ture of $276.84 mil­lion by more than $6.3 mil­lion, with four months still re­main­ing in the year.

Per­sad-Bisses­sar sug­gest­ed that on­go­ing re­cruit­ment with­in the Po­lice Ser­vice could help ease the over­time bur­den while al­low­ing of­fi­cers to take their al­lot­ted time off.

“They are re­cruit­ing new of­fi­cers, so this would help to give ex­ist­ing of­fi­cers their al­lot­ted time off and al­so bring the bill down,” she said.

“How­ev­er, I be­lieve they earned their mon­ey, and I thank them for the ex­tra ef­forts they have made.”

The dis­clo­sure has al­so prompt­ed calls for greater scruti­ny of po­lice over­time spend­ing.

At­tor­ney Keron Ramkhal­whan, who filed the FOI re­quest on be­half of his client, Vishal Per­sad, has called for an in­de­pen­dent au­dit, ar­gu­ing that over­time should be the ex­cep­tion rather than the norm.

He has urged the Po­lice Ser­vice Com­mis­sion and/or the Gov­ern­ment to in­ves­ti­gate how over­time is man­aged, main­tain­ing that tax­pay­ers de­serve ac­count­abil­i­ty for the ex­pen­di­ture.