An­na-Lisa Paul

Se­nior Re­porter

an­na-lisa.paul@guardian.co.tt

Vow­ing to en­sure their lat­est ve­hi­cle ac­qui­si­tions will not be al­lowed to fall in­to rack and ru­in as in the past, act­ing Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice (CoP), Ju­nior Ben­jamin has as­sured a com­pre­hen­sive sys­tem for the main­te­nance and up­keep of 67 new RAV 4 ve­hi­cles for the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice (TTPS) will be im­ple­ment­ed.

Ex­tend­ing this as­sur­ance yes­ter­day dur­ing a hand­ing over cer­e­mo­ny at the Po­lice Acad­e­my, St James, dur­ing which time the 52 marked and 15 un­marked po­lice ve­hi­cles were dri­ven across the pa­rade square, he said, “At least every di­vi­sion will have at least three new ve­hi­cles.”

Con­firm­ing To­ba­go will al­so share in the lat­est bag of good­ies ac­quired by the TTPS at a cost of just un­der $23 mil­lion, Ben­jamin said some of the ve­hi­cles would be as­signed to the Emer­gency Re­sponse Pa­trol (ERP) Unit to help in the re­sponse time to crime.”

Pressed to say how they in­tend­ed to en­sure this lat­est fleet pur­chased through Toy­ota, did not end up in one of the many “grave­yards” cur­rent­ly hous­ing derelict po­lice ve­hi­cles, he ex­plained, “From the very get-go, we would en­sure that there is a file on each ve­hi­cle and there is go­ing to be, at least, prop­er in­ven­to­ry where we would be able to look at these ve­hi­cles, know ex­act­ly when they are due for ser­vic­ing and en­sure that the ser­vice is done.”

Re­fer­ring to past in­ci­dents where a lack of funds had pre­vent­ed the TTPS from com­plet­ing sched­uled main­te­nance and up­grade works with­in the re­quired pe­ri­ods, Ben­jamin said, “We are go­ing to put the nec­es­sary things in place to en­sure that those things will not be a prob­lem to­day.”

He added, “We are go­ing to work with our Fi­nance De­part­ment to en­sure that cer­tain things are in place so there will be time­ly main­te­nance of these ve­hi­cles.”

Asked if the TTPS has con­sid­ered re­fur­bish­ing some of the derelict po­lice ve­hi­cles aban­doned at sev­er­al sites in both is­lands, he said this was an op­tion cur­rent­ly on the ta­ble.

“That is part of the new OPR sys­tem which caters for that,” he said.

He claimed the Of­fice of Pro­cure­ment Reg­u­la­tion (OPR) was now deal­ing with the dis­pos­al of these derelict ve­hi­cles.

The RAV 4’s were the pre­ferred choice by the TTPS, giv­en the ter­rain and topog­ra­phy of both is­lands.

Re­veal­ing yes­ter­day’s ac­qui­si­tion and cer­e­mo­ny was the ma­te­ri­al­i­sa­tion of an ex­er­cise that had be­gan back in 2024, Ben­jamin said they would be en­gag­ing in dis­cus­sions with Toy­ota to en­sure ser­vic­ing and main­te­nance was done in a time­ly man­ner.

The ad­di­tion­al ve­hi­cles are ex­pect­ed to en­hance law en­force­ment ca­pa­bil­i­ties, im­prove emer­gency re­sponse times, and height­en po­lice vis­i­bil­i­ty across the coun­try.

The act­ing top cop said such tools were nec­es­sary in mod­ern polic­ing as, “In to­day’s rapid­ly evolv­ing en­vi­ron­ment, law en­force­ment must be mo­bile, re­spon­sive, and equipped with the right re­sources.”

Ben­jamin said the fleet was an “in­vest­ment” by the au­thor­i­ties, “Not just in in­fra­struc­ture, but in trust and readi­ness, and ser­vice de­liv­ery.”

Look­ing on proud­ly as he sur­veyed the 26 marked po­lice ve­hi­cles gleam­ing in the evening sun, Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter, Roger Alexan­der, urged the CoP to put the ve­hi­cles to work im­me­di­ate­ly.

“I want when we leave here, al­most im­me­di­ate­ly, these ve­hi­cles must go out in­to the streets and per­form their role and func­tion with the po­lice of­fi­cers present,” he ad­vised.

He ac­knowl­edged the call by the pub­lic for a height­ened po­lice pres­ence on the na­tion’s streets and re­mind­ed of­fi­cers of their oblig­a­tion to ful­fil the re­spon­si­bil­i­ties of their job.

He urged, “You can dri­ve all day and all night, but with­out en­force­ment, you are just an­oth­er ve­hi­cle on the road, and we don’t want that.”

Two weeks ago, Trans­port and Civ­il Avi­a­tion Min­is­ter Eli Za­k­our toured the Ve­hi­cle Main­te­nance Com­pa­ny of T&T fa­cil­i­ty at Beetham Gar­dens , to get a first-hand look at its op­er­a­tions.

Alexan­der said it was now up to Za­k­our to see how soon he could com­pile a re­port to be hand­ed to Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad Bisses­sar, which will de­ter­mine the way for­ward for the state agency.