The au­dit to ac­count for all po­lice uni­forms, ve­hi­cles and com­put­ers be­long­ing to the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice (TTPS) is con­tin­u­ing, with of­fi­cials ex­pect­ed to be­gin re­ceiv­ing the find­ings with­in the next two weeks.

Act­ing Deputy Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice (DCP), Op­er­a­tions, Curt Si­mon re­vealed on May 16, that he had com­mis­sioned the au­dit af­ter re­ceiv­ing cer­tain in­for­ma­tion which paved the way for de­tailed and thor­ough checks to be done.

He said it had be­come nec­es­sary, “To de­ter­mine if any­thing is miss­ing or un­ac­count­ed for, or if every­thing is cor­rect and reg­u­lar.”

The an­nounce­ment of the au­dit fol­lowed re­ports by po­lice of­fi­cers as­signed to the Guard and Emer­gency Branch, Gar­den Road, Aranguez that uni­forms and oth­er items had been stolen from their lock­ers in re­cent weeks.

A 34-year-old of­fi­cer as­signed to the Arou­ca Task Force was ar­rest­ed at his San­gre Grande home on May 23 by of­fi­cers of the North East­ern Di­vi­sion Gang Unit, af­ter he was found in pos­ses­sion of a bul­let-proof vest that had been re­port­ed stolen from the GEB quar­ters.

One GEB of­fi­cer, who had been on leave since April 30, claimed to have placed sev­er­al items in his lock­er, which is in the SRP male dor­mi­to­ry and left.

Re­port­ing for du­ty around 6.30 am on May 2, the of­fi­cer claimed that while open­ing his lock­er, he ob­served the low­er part had been tam­pered with and up­on check­ing, he dis­cov­ered sev­er­al items miss­ing.

These in­clud­ed one dig­i­tal cam­ou­flage jack­et, one dig­i­tal cam­ou­flage pants, one tac­ti­cal belt, and one bul­let­proof vest.

This was fol­lowed by yet an­oth­er theft of uni­forms and per­son­al items from of­fi­cers’ lock­ers in Aranguez, days af­ter.

Three con­sta­bles claimed to have se­cured per­son­al and gov­ern­ment-is­sued items in their lock­ers be­fore go­ing to bed on May 8, and up­on wak­ing up the next day, found their lock­ers bro­ken in­to.

Among the items they re­port­ed miss­ing were dig­i­tal cam­ou­flage pants, util­i­ty belts, iden­ti­fi­ca­tion cards, rapid as­sault cam­ou­flage jack­ets, dump pouch­es, pis­tol hol­sters, $1,160 in cash, deb­it and cred­it cards, na­tion­al iden­ti­fi­ca­tion cards, and oth­er per­son­al items.

Si­mon on Wednes­day con­firmed the of­fi­cer’s ar­rest was di­rect­ly re­lat­ed to the re­ports of theft at the GEB.

In­di­cat­ing the au­dit was on­go­ing, he said, “It in­volves the en­tire ser­vice.”

He added, “Some ar­eas would need to rec­on­cile with oth­er ar­eas. I ex­pect to start get­ting sub­mis­sions in about two weeks.”

Await­ing the find­ings, he said once short­com­ings were de­tect­ed and iden­ti­fied, “I would re­turn for things to be ad­dressed.”