Service Station Owners’ Association questions costs of new speed guns

The Ser­vice Sta­tion Own­ers’ As­so­ci­a­tion (ODA) has raised ques­tions about the in­tro­duc­tion of li­dar speed en­force­ment de­vices by the Trinidad and To­ba­go Po­lice Ser­vice (TTPS), say­ing the move comes at a time when ba­sic re­sources re­main lim­it­ed at some po­lice sta­tions such as print­ers, re­ceipt books and oth­er es­sen­tial ad­min­is­tra­tive items.

In a state­ment, ODA Pres­i­dent Reval Chat­ter­goon wel­comed the ad­di­tion of new en­force­ment tools but con­trast­ed it with re­port­ed short­ages of ba­sic sup­plies al­so ques­tioned the lack of dis­clo­sure around the cost of the new de­vices, say­ing pro­cure­ment de­tails were not made pub­lic. It crit­i­cised what it de­scribed as a pat­tern of clas­si­fy­ing state spend­ing as “sen­si­tive” or “con­fi­den­tial”, point­ing to past re­quests for in­for­ma­tion on fu­el sub­si­dies.

The ODA fur­ther raised con­cern that na­tion­al crime sta­tis­tics re­main un­avail­able on the TTPS web­site, not­ing that the is­sue was pre­vi­ous­ly at­trib­uted by the Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter in No­vem­ber 2025 to undis­closed tech­ni­cal prob­lems.

It asked what da­ta ex­ists on speed­ing fines col­lect­ed, con­vic­tion rates fol­low­ing the in­crease in penal­ties on 1 Jan­u­ary 2026, and the im­pact of con­test­ed fines on the ju­di­cial sys­tem.

The as­so­ci­a­tion al­so ques­tioned whether in­creased in­vest­ment in speed en­force­ment tech­nol­o­gy is de­liv­er­ing mean­ing­ful safe­ty ben­e­fits, es­pe­cial­ly giv­en over­all na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty spend­ing lev­els.

It sug­gest­ed that road safe­ty should not fo­cus sole­ly on speed­ing, ar­gu­ing that traf­fic ac­ci­dents have mul­ti­ple caus­es. The ODA al­so ques­tioned the ef­fec­tive­ness of speed traps in an era where mo­torists use nav­i­ga­tion apps and so­cial me­dia to share en­force­ment lo­ca­tions in re­al time.

The group pro­posed a stronger fo­cus on vis­i­ble polic­ing, in­clud­ing pa­trol ve­hi­cles, mo­tor­cy­cle units and wider high­way cov­er­age, along­side in­vest­ment in tools such as body cam­eras to im­prove ac­count­abil­i­ty and de­tec­tion rates.

The ODA said it re­mained con­cerned about trans­paren­cy in pub­lic spend­ing and called for clear­er in­for­ma­tion on pro­cure­ment and use of en­force­ment equip­ment.

It added that it sup­ports ef­forts to im­prove road safe­ty and re­duce crime, but urged greater ac­count­abil­i­ty in how tax­pay­ers’ mon­ey is used.