RHON­DOR DOWLAT

Se­nior Re­porter

rhon­dor.dowlat@guardian.co.tt

It’s al­most the three-year mark since the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives passed leg­is­la­tion al­low­ing the pub­lic to use pep­per spray for per­son­al pro­tec­tion and on­ly 593 ap­pli­ca­tions have been re­ceived by the po­lice.

This was dis­closed by Sgt Ker­win Jones dur­ing the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice’s me­dia brief­ing at the Po­lice Ad­min­is­tra­tion build­ing in Port-of-Spain yes­ter­day.

How­ev­er, when asked if there was an over­whelm­ing re­quest for ap­pli­ca­tions for per­mits, es­pe­cial­ly as the coun­try is in the mid­dle of the Car­ni­val sea­son, the head of the Firearms De­part­ment, ASP Ja­son Cuffy, said: “No. “Not re­al­ly. We have not re­ceived an over­whelm­ing amount of ap­pli­ca­tions. How­ev­er, they have been stream­ing in. I should say trick­ling in and so far, we are han­dling it ef­fi­cient­ly and ef­fec­tive­ly and we have no com­plaints as yet from any of the ap­pli­cants.”

In re­leas­ing de­tailed sta­tis­tics, Jones said: “Since the com­mence­ment of the act, there have been 593 ap­pli­ca­tions as of Jan­u­ary 18, 2024. Out of these ap­pli­ca­tion,s 103 were pep­per spray per­mits.”

Jones added that re­gard­ing im­porters, 109 ap­pli­ca­tions were re­ceived and just 11 per­mits were grant­ed.

“It should be not­ed that out of the 109 ap­pli­ca­tions, sev­er­al were du­pli­cat­ed, mean­ing this re­sult­ed from er­rors made in the ini­tial ap­pli­ca­tion which can­not be edit­ed. We al­so have ap­pli­cants who were no longer in­ter­est­ed. Ap­pli­cants did not have the re­quired stor­age for the pep­per spray can­is­ters, no pay­ment of the pro­cess­ing fees were up­loaded, ap­pli­cants have out­stand­ing dis­crep­an­cies to be ad­dressed be­fore ap­proval can be grant­ed,” he ex­plained.

“Re­tail­ers - 26 ap­pli­ca­tions were re­ceived and out of that four were ap­proved, 17 ap­pli­ca­tions are present­ly out­side on en­quiries, five of those have no record of pay­ment of pro­cess­ing fee,” he added.

Jones said to date, less than 100 per­mits were grant­ed.

“The 90 pep­per spray per­mits grant­ed were for per­sons from whom the re­ceipts were up­loaded, there­by these per­mits could be gen­er­at­ed. The out­stand­ing 369 ap­pli­ca­tions are for those per­sons for whom no pay­ment re­ceipts were up­loaded.”

It was al­so not­ed that 32 per­mits were ap­proved for males and 63 for fe­males.

The call for pep­per spray use and leg­is­la­tion in this coun­try gained mo­men­tum fol­low­ing the mur­ders of Ashan­ti Ri­ley, 18, and An­drea Bharatt, 23, who were killed with­in a month of each oth­er in 2021.