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Tuesday, July 29, 2025

13 Transit SRPs request transfer citing work conditions

by

News Desk
2384 days ago
20190118
13 Special Reserves Police officers attached to the Transit Unit have written to the Police Commissioner requesting transfers, citing work conditions.

13 Special Reserves Police officers attached to the Transit Unit have written to the Police Commissioner requesting transfers, citing work conditions.

Thir­teen Spe­cial Re­served Of­fi­cers (SRPs) at­tached to the Po­lice Tran­sit Unit have writ­ten to Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Gary Grif­fith re­quest­ing a trans­fer out of the unit, cit­ing var­i­ous fi­nan­cial and work­place chal­lenges.

Let­ters were sent to the Com­mis­sion­er in No­vem­ber and again on Jan­u­ary 10, list­ing the names of all the of­fi­cers, their ser­vice num­bers and phone num­bers.

Let­ters were al­so sent to the Deputy Per­ma­nent Sec­re­tary in the Min­istry of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty,

"Dear Mr Grif­fith," one let­ter said, "I, (num­ber and name omit­ted) along with the fol­low­ing of­fi­cers are cur­rent­ly at­tached to the Tran­sit Po­lice Unit (TPU). We are kind­ly re­quest­ing re-as­sign­ment to any avail­able units/sta­tions with­in the Trinidad and To­ba­go Po­lice Ser­vice. We are avail­able at your con­ve­nience at the fol­low­ing con­tact num­bers."

The of­fi­cers say they were not re­in­stat­ed to their job in Oc­to­ber af­ter com­plain­ing about their con­di­tions and tells the Com­mis­sion­er, "we have fam­i­lies to feed".

The SRPs say that hav­ing worked at the Po­lice Tran­sit Unit for three years, they have en­coun­tered many chal­leng­ing tasks.

"Our salary is $5,300 and we get a $1,000 du­ty al­lowance. We asked for a raise of pay and OLEP (Of­fice of Law En­force­ment Pol­i­cy) ne­go­ti­at­ed with the CPO for a $300 pay in­crease which up to this day hasn’t been giv­en to the work­ers. Our du­ties are con­sid­ered as hav­ing the same risks as oth­er po­lice of­fi­cers and when told of be­ing un­fair, we were told that we are not po­lice of­fi­cers but were hired to work at Tran­sit," the let­ter to the PS said.

The of­fi­cers, how­ev­er, are re­ject­ing the cat­e­gori­sa­tion of "civil­ians", giv­en that they wear the po­lice uni­forms and are en­trust­ed with po­lice firearms.

They state in the let­ter that sev­er­al of their tasks put them in the pos­si­ble line of fire.

"Of­fi­cers at Tran­sit Po­lice Unit are called up­on to do many risky jobs, such as ex­er­cis­es on the Beetham and in Laven­tille. We are told that we have noth­ing to cov­er us if some­thing is to hap­pen off the bus route," the let­ter states.

The of­fi­cers say that al­though they were of­ten left with­out ve­hi­cles and had to car­ry out foot pa­trols and com­plain about un­ac­cept­able work­ing hours and con­di­tions.

The let­ter al­so com­plains of poor treat­ment to two fe­male SRPs who were preg­nant.

"All we ask is for a hear­ing, some­one of au­thor­i­ty to help us," the let­ter states.

Com­mis­sion­er Grif­fith is cur­rent­ly out of the coun­try and could not be reached for com­ment.


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