PCA welcomes new TTPS initiative to trace ammunition

Gail Alexan­der

Se­nior Po­lit­i­cal Re­porter

The Po­lice Com­plaints Au­thor­i­ty (PCA) has wel­comed the an­nounce­ment that the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice (TTPS) will be plac­ing all am­mu­ni­tion with a mark­ing to al­low for trac­ing of bul­lets - some­thing which the PCA had rec­om­mend­ed since Sep­tem­ber 2024.

And the au­thor­i­ty yes­ter­day al­so not­ed oth­er ad­vice to the TTPS in its an­nu­al re­ports.

The PCA, led by David West, did so in re­sponse to Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Roger Alexan­der’s state­ment in Par­lia­ment last week about TTPS’ cur­rent ex­er­cise to ini­ti­ate mark­ing on all ex­ist­ing am­mu­ni­tion so as to be able to track po­lice bul­lets go­ing for­ward.

Alexan­der spoke on the is­sue fol­low­ing Op­po­si­tion whip Mar­vin Gon­za­les’ query about TTPS am­mu­ni­tion found at an Arou­ca mur­der scene on Fri­day and whether an in­ves­ti­ga­tion was launched by the TTPS on this mat­ter.

Alexan­der said since 2020 “and be­yond, fur­ther than that,” am­mu­ni­tion with mark­ings of the TTPS and oth­er agen­cies have been found on crime scenes and the TTPS had start­ed an in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­to the lat­est case. At that time, he said he had been ad­vised by the Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice of a cur­rent project, en­gag­ing the TTPS since 2025, to re­place all ex­ist­ing am­mu­ni­tion with a mark­ing so that the TTPS will be able to iden­ti­fy them for the pur­pose of trac­ing and ac­count­abil­i­ty. Alexan­der said this ex­er­cise will be com­plet­ed on Fri­day. He didn’t give any fur­ther de­tails.

Yes­ter­day, the PCA not­ed Alexan­der’s com­ments on the project, adding, “How­ev­er, this mea­sure was rec­om­mend­ed by the PCA to the Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice on 18th Sep­tem­ber 2024.”

It was not­ed that the PCA’s 2024 an­nu­al re­port, among its rec­om­men­da­tions, had called for con­sid­er­a­tion to be giv­en to the im­ple­men­ta­tion of a se­r­i­al num­ber sys­tem on po­lice kit items so that it be­comes pos­si­ble to trace and/or track such items back to the of­fi­cers to whom it was as­signed. The PCA had stat­ed that im­ple­men­ta­tion of such a sys­tem would be ben­e­fi­cial in the event of mis­place­ment and/or theft of po­lice kit items.

The PCA said the sys­tem would serve as a de­ter­rent to cor­rupt of­fi­cers who may at­tempt to mis­use po­lice items and would al­so be a pre­ven­ta­tive mea­sure rel­a­tive to the im­per­son­ation of po­lice of­fi­cers by civil­ians.

Es­pe­cial­ly in view of bul­let cas­ings with “TTPS” mark­ings found at var­i­ous shoot­ing scenes, the PCA had specif­i­cal­ly called for TTPS con­sid­er­a­tion of a man­age­ment sys­tem con­cern­ing the is­suance and re­turn of am­mu­ni­tion to al­low for greater trans­paren­cy, track­ing and ac­count­abil­i­ty. Not­ing oth­er ju­ris­dic­tions’ prac­tice, the PCA had ad­vised colour codes, let­ters and num­bers as­signed to var­i­ous TTPS de­part­ments to iden­ti­fy/trace am­mu­ni­tion.

While hav­ing de­ter­rent val­ues against mis­use of po­lice-is­sued am­mu­ni­tion, the PCA be­lieved it may al­so have been use­ful in re­fut­ing al­le­ga­tions of crim­i­nal­i­ty and se­ri­ous po­lice mis­con­duct.

Yes­ter­day, the PCA al­so not­ed oth­er ad­vice pro­vid­ed to the com­mis­sion­er out­lined in its pre­vi­ous an­nu­al re­ports.

Among the 41 pieces of ad­vice from the PCA’s Oc­to­ber 2024-Sep­tem­ber 2025 re­port re­cent­ly laid in Par­lia­ment, and checked by Guardian Me­dia, there were re­peat­ed calls (in 2024 and 2025) for con­sid­er­a­tion of a pol­i­cy and/or guide­lines to reg­u­late the man­ner in which po­lice of­fi­cers use so­cial me­dia in per­son­al and pro­fes­sion­al ca­pac­i­ties.

The PCA rec­om­mend­ed po­lice/in­struc­tions to treat with of­fi­cers us­ing their per­son­al cell de­vices dur­ing du­ties. It cit­ed the New York Po­lice De­part­ment (NYPD) pro­hibit­ing of­fi­cers from tak­ing pho­tos, video and au­dio record­ings dur­ing cit­i­zen con­tact. The PCA’s ad­vice was re­it­er­at­ed in 2025, with ex­am­ples from Aus­tralian and UK au­thor­i­ties on unau­tho­rised dis­clo­sure of con­fi­den­tial po­lice in­for­ma­tion - in­clud­ing scenes, car/CCTV footage, po­lice train­ing videos - to so­cial me­dia with a crim­i­nal charge penal­ty.

The PCA had fur­ther rec­om­mend­ed that con­sid­er­a­tion be giv­en to up­dat­ing TTPS’s use of force pol­i­cy to in­clude more de­tailed guide­lines for of­fi­cers tasked with crit­i­cal split-sec­ond de­ci­sions and for re­mind­ing of­fi­cers that the use of Bal­a­cla­va masks/any masks are ex­press­ly pro­hib­it­ed. It had urged the TTPS to re­mind of­fi­cers not to abuse their pow­er and that they should treat the pub­lic pro­fes­sion­al­ly and cour­te­ous­ly.