Gail Alexan­der

Se­nior Po­lit­i­cal Re­porter

For­mer po­lice com­mis­sion­er Gary Grif­fith has crit­i­cised Gov­ern­ment’s plan to in­crease the strength of the Trinidad and To­ba­go Po­lice Ser­vice (TTPS) from 7,884 of­fi­cers to 10,200 over five years, ar­gu­ing that ac­count­abil­i­ty and lead­er­ship, not man­pow­er, are the re­al is­sues fac­ing the or­gan­i­sa­tion.

Speak­ing af­ter Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Roger Alexan­der an­nounced the phased re­cruit­ment pro­gramme in Par­lia­ment last Fri­day, Grif­fith de­scribed the ini­tia­tive as “not a se­ri­ous crime-fight­ing strat­e­gy.”

Alexan­der said the in­crease would im­prove TTPS vis­i­bil­i­ty and op­er­a­tional ef­fec­tive­ness across com­mu­ni­ties, bor­ders, schools and State of Emer­gency re­spons­es.

But Grif­fith ar­gued that sim­ply ex­pand­ing the ser­vice with­out ad­dress­ing sys­temic weak­ness­es would not pro­duce mean­ing­ful re­sults.

“It’s the usu­al ex­cuse of­fered when those in charge are un­able to de­liv­er re­sults: ask for more man­pow­er, re­sources, equip­ment, and more mon­ey,” he said.

Grif­fith warned that in­creas­ing the size of the TTPS with­out prop­er over­sight could weak­en the or­gan­i­sa­tion fur­ther.

“If you in­crease num­bers with­out prop­er ac­count­abil­i­ty, you don’t au­to­mat­i­cal­ly in­crease pro­duc­tiv­i­ty. In fact, you risk weak­en­ing the po­lice ser­vice even fur­ther by in­creas­ing the dif­fi­cul­ty of ef­fec­tive su­per­vi­sion, height­en­ing the risk of un­qual­i­fied, poor­ly trained, or rogue el­e­ments en­ter­ing the or­gan­i­sa­tion,” he said.

He said the coun­try al­ready has one of the high­est po­lice-to-pop­u­la­tion ra­tios in the world and ar­gued that the fo­cus should in­stead be on “a dis­ci­plined, ac­count­able, vis­i­ble, re­spon­sive, and in­tel­li­gence-led po­lice ser­vice.”

Grif­fith al­so ques­tioned the fi­nan­cial im­pli­ca­tions of the pro­pos­al, say­ing tax­pay­ers could face an ad­di­tion­al bur­den ex­ceed­ing $500 mil­lion an­nu­al­ly with­out guar­an­teed im­prove­ments in polic­ing out­comes.

“More of­fi­cers sit­ting in sta­tions won’t re­duce crime. More of­fi­cers with­out per­for­mance met­rics will not im­prove re­sponse times,” he said.

Point­ing to his tenure be­tween 2018 and 2021, Grif­fith said im­prove­ments in pub­lic trust came through vis­i­ble pa­trols, GPS-tracked po­lice ve­hi­cles, strength­ened com­mu­ni­ca­tion sys­tems, rapid re­sponse tar­gets and strict com­mand ac­count­abil­i­ty.

Crim­i­nol­o­gist Dr Randy Seep­er­sad, how­ev­er, wel­comed the ex­pan­sion plan, call­ing it “very good news” for Trinidad and To­ba­go.

He said in­creas­ing man­pow­er would strength­en the TTPS’s op­er­a­tional reach, par­tic­u­lar­ly when com­bined with in­tel­li­gence-led polic­ing and strate­gic de­ploy­ment.

“It’s not just a state of emer­gency per se, but it’s the ex­er­cise of those pow­ers in an ef­fec­tive way by the TTPS, mean­ing the way that they are de­ploy­ing their re­sources, tar­get­ing spe­cif­ic ge­o­graph­ic ar­eas and us­ing in­tel­li­gence and da­ta to dri­ve de­ci­sions,” he said.

While ac­knowl­edg­ing that T&T al­ready has a rel­a­tive­ly high num­ber of po­lice of­fi­cers per capi­ta, Seep­er­sad said more “boots on the ground” could im­prove crime con­trol ef­forts.

He stressed, how­ev­er, that polic­ing alone would not solve the crime prob­lem.

“Crime sup­pres­sion is on­ly one as­pect of what is nec­es­sary,” he said, adding that the Min­istry of Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty was al­so fo­cus­ing on pre­ven­tion strate­gies, in­clud­ing ear­ly in­ter­ven­tion pro­grammes tar­get­ing at-risk pri­ma­ry and sec­ondary school stu­dents.