KEVON FELMINE

Se­nior Re­porter

kevon.felmine@guardian.co.tt

Amid con­cerns that a po­ten­tial con­flict be­tween the Unit­ed States and Venezuela could spill over in­to Trinidad and To­ba­go, the Es­tate Po­lice As­so­ci­a­tion (EPA) has warned that its mem­bers are not ad­e­quate­ly equipped to pro­tect the coun­try’s crit­i­cal in­fra­struc­ture and high-risk as­sets.

EPA pres­i­dent Deryck Richard­son said the as­so­ci­a­tion has raised these con­cerns since 2018, but the is­sue has tak­en on greater ur­gency fol­low­ing re­cent threats from Venezuela. Es­tate con­sta­bles op­er­ate across both the pub­lic and pri­vate sec­tors, tasked with se­cur­ing key fa­cil­i­ties in­clud­ing TSTT, T&TEC, WASA, Pi­ar­co In­ter­na­tion­al Air­port, sea­ports, and Her­itage Pe­tro­le­um’s off­shore in­stal­la­tions.

Richard­son warned that in any hos­tile sce­nario, crit­i­cal in­fra­struc­ture would like­ly be­come an ear­ly tar­get.

“If there are hos­tiles, they would want to take out your in­fra­struc­ture. We are an en­er­gy-based econ­o­my, so they may want to take that out. They may want to stop your com­mu­ni­ca­tions, elec­tric­i­ty, and wa­ter sup­ply. Those are the things com­bat­ants will look at, es­pe­cial­ly in a sit­u­a­tion where they are com­bat­ing a high­er force like the Unit­ed States Army and their mil­i­tary,” Richard­son said.

While the De­fence Force would be ex­pect­ed to re­spond to large-scale or high-pow­ered at­tacks, Richard­son stressed that es­tate con­sta­bles would al­most cer­tain­ly be the first re­spon­ders, par­tic­u­lar­ly if in­tel­li­gence fails to de­tect a threat in ad­vance. He not­ed that the pres­ence of a large Venezue­lan mi­grant pop­u­la­tion al­so adds to se­cu­ri­ty chal­lenges, as au­thor­i­ties may not ful­ly know the ca­pa­bil­i­ties or in­ten­tions of every in­di­vid­ual.

He cau­tioned that threats could al­so emerge do­mes­ti­cal­ly, in­clud­ing the pos­si­bil­i­ty of sleep­er cells.

“Re­gard­less of what peo­ple think, that it is be­tween Venezuela and the US, the fact is that there have been pro­nounce­ments made by Venezuela, and there are cer­tain things be­ing said by politi­cians in Trinidad and To­ba­go con­cern­ing that. There is a par­tic­u­lar con­cern as to what is hap­pen­ing in the na­tion­al and in­ter­na­tion­al sphere.”

Richard­son said the EPA has a du­ty of care to alert the pub­lic to vul­ner­a­bil­i­ties sur­round­ing the na­tion’s crit­i­cal as­sets.

“Be­cause when the in­tel­li­gence fails, the first per­sons in the line of at­tack are the es­tate po­lice.”

How­ev­er, he not­ed that the Firearms Act lim­its es­tate con­sta­bles to pis­tols, re­volvers, and shot­guns, while pro­hibit­ing them from car­ry­ing high-pow­ered ri­fles or au­to­mat­ic weapons—equip­ment re­served for the De­fence Force and spe­cialised law en­force­ment units. He added that es­tate con­sta­bles are au­tho­rised to car­ry on­ly 25 rounds of am­mu­ni­tion, com­pared with 50 rounds per­mit­ted to pri­vate firearm hold­ers, while po­ten­tial at­tack­ers may pos­sess high-pow­ered weapons.

Richard­son al­so high­light­ed gaps in train­ing, say­ing es­tate con­sta­bles lack the spe­cialised prepa­ra­tion need­ed to re­spond to so­phis­ti­cat­ed se­cu­ri­ty threats.

“How do we pro­tect the crit­i­cal in­fra­struc­ture when there is a breach, and in­evitably, most of the time, there are breach­es, if the per­sons who are tasked with pro­tect­ing the crit­i­cal in­fra­struc­ture are un­der-re­sourced, un­der­paid, un­der­trained and un­der­armed?” he asked.

De­spite meet­ings with De­fence Min­is­ter Wayne Sturge and Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Roger Alexan­der, Richard­son said au­thor­i­ties have shown lit­tle ap­pre­ci­a­tion of the ur­gency of the sit­u­a­tion. He called for amend­ments to ex­ist­ing leg­is­la­tion and ac­cess to the spe­cialised train­ing cur­rent­ly af­ford­ed to po­lice of­fi­cers.

“All par­ties need to come to­geth­er for an ur­gent in­ter­ven­tion,” he said.

Guardian Me­dia at­tempt­ed to con­tact Alexan­der and Sturge for com­ment, but no re­spons­es were re­ceived up to press time.