Guevarro thanks public for warm welcome

An­na-Lisa Paul

Se­nior Re­porter

an­[email protected]

Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice (CoP) Al­lis­ter Gue­var­ro says de­spite the achieve­ments and chal­lenges of the past year, he is not daunt­ed by what lies ahead and re­mains firm­ly fo­cused on build­ing a bet­ter T&T Po­lice Ser­vice (TTPS).

Cel­e­brat­ing one year in of­fice yes­ter­day, he ad­mit­ted, “This has been a very long year and a very try­ing year for the TTPS in many spheres.”

In an in­ter­view at the Po­lice Ad­min­is­tra­tion Build­ing, Port-of-Spain, Gue­var­ro reaf­firmed his com­mit­ment to the job, say­ing noth­ing will de­ter him from do­ing what he was cho­sen to do.

While de­clin­ing to high­light par­tic­u­lar mile­stones defin­ing his tenure thus far, Gue­var­ro ad­mit­ted to be­ing pleased with the ini­tial wel­come.

“I must say that I was pleased with the pub­lic’s wel­com­ing of the new CoP. I was hap­py with the TTPS staff and the way they wel­comed me as their new leader,” he said.

Gue­var­ro, now 50, was ap­point­ed CoP on June 17, with his ap­point­ment tak­ing ef­fect from June 18, 2025.

Fol­low­ing the suc­cess­ful com­ple­tion of his 12-month pro­ba­tion­ary pe­ri­od, Gue­var­ro is ex­pect­ed to be con­firmed in the post un­til re­tire­ment at age 60.

With a term large­ly de­fined by two States of Emer­gency (SoEs), which spanned Ju­ly 18, 2025 to Jan­u­ary 31, 2026 and cur­rent­ly from March 3, 2026, to Sep­tem­ber 17, 2026, Gue­var­ro as­sured the pub­lic that this is not the TTPS’s lat­est crime-fight­ing tool. Rather, he said the SoEs formed part of the ser­vice’s crime-fight­ing reper­toire.

“I want to as­sure the pub­lic that the TTPS has a strate­gic plan. We have al­ways had strate­gic plans from the ear­ly 2000s com­ing for­ward that treat with crime and we cur­rent­ly do have a strate­gic plan to deal with crime. What the SoE did was add a dif­fer­ent lay­er to what we had avail­able to us in our tools,” he said.

Cit­ing the is­suance of Pre­ven­tive De­ten­tion Or­ders (PDOs) and war­rant­less en­try as two ad­di­tion­al strate­gies now avail­able to the TTPS, Gue­var­ro claimed, “This has main­tained a par­tic­u­lar amount of con­trol over crime for the TTPS.”

Cel­e­brat­ing what he said were achieve­ments com­ing out of last year’s SoE, with homi­cide rates drop­ping to the low­est it’s been in 15 years dur­ing Sep­tem­ber 2025, he con­tin­ued, “We went to the end of the year and fin­ished off with 42 per cent homi­cides less than we had in 2024.”

In 2024, T&T record­ed a to­tal of 615 mur­ders, mark­ing it as the dead­liest year in the coun­try’s his­to­ry, sur­pass­ing the pre­vi­ous record of 605 mur­ders set in 2022.

Proud that the TTPS had been able to get the mur­der rate down to 369 by the end of 2025, the CoP con­firmed, “That was a mam­moth task.”

Recog­nis­ing the hard work of his of­fi­cers in achiev­ing this mile­stone, he added, “With­out them and the sup­port that they gave, it would not have been pos­si­ble.”

On the is­sue of the large over­time bill that the TTPS had so far racked up, Gue­var­ro said the $120 mil­lion re­quest for sup­ple­men­tal fund­ing was “to pay over­time that was left out­stand­ing for 2024 and 2025 ... so it was to pay bills.”

Look­ing at the cur­rent fis­cal pe­ri­od, he said, “We do not know at this point in time what the 2026 over­time bill will look like as yet.”

He ex­plained that po­lice of­fi­cers have a six-month to sub­mit over­time claims.

Fo­cus­ing on strength­en­ing the in­fra­struc­ture and re­source base for of­fi­cers in terms of equip­ment, ve­hi­cles and oth­er fa­cil­i­ties, Gue­var­ro said an au­dit of the ser­vice’s fi­nances had turned up a mul­ti-mil­lion-dol­lar debt, which has since been re­port­ed to the Min­is­ter of Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty Roger Alexan­der.

He said, “We are about $500 mil­lion in debt and this in­cludes debt for every pos­si­ble ven­dor that you can name.”

He said he was now care­ful­ly re­assess­ing how the TTPS will nav­i­gate this fi­nan­cial set­back mov­ing for­ward.

“The coun­try is now in a po­si­tion where we have lim­it­ed funds avail­able in terms of the pub­lic purse, so pri­ori­ti­sa­tion now be­comes the or­der of the day,” Gue­var­ro said.

He again de­fend­ed the de­ci­sion to re­tire the use of over 1,000 body cam­eras that were pur­chased by a for­mer com­mis­sion­er, as he main­tained they were sub­stan­dard.

Gue­var­ro al­so re­vealed, “We are cur­rent­ly at the end stages of an ex­pres­sion of in­ter­est for the sup­ply­ing of body cam­eras for the TTPS.”

With ap­prox­i­mate­ly 184 func­tion­al body cam­eras cur­rent­ly avail­able for use across the TTPS, Gue­var­ro rub­bished claims by for­mer of­fi­cials that the brand Ax­on had been pro­cured for use by of­fi­cers lo­cal­ly.

La­belling the Ax­on brand the “Rolls Royce of body cam­eras” the CoP said none of the cur­rent body cams in the ser­vice was of that cal­i­bre.

“They were all made in Chi­na and at this point in time, they are not suit­able or even in a po­si­tion of use­ful­ness to the TTPS,” Gue­var­ro said.

While he has short-, medi­um- and long-term plans to grow the TTPS, Gue­var­ro’s vi­sion in­cludes trans­form­ing T&T in­to a “hub of law en­force­ment train­ing in this part of the world.”

He al­so re­vealed a plan to re­cruit uni­ver­si­ty grad­u­ates as one way to ex­pand the ser­vice’s skill set, say­ing this would aid in pro­mot­ing and pre­serv­ing the in­ter­nal op­er­a­tions of the or­gan­i­sa­tion.

Re­fer­ring to an in­ci­dent ear­li­er this week in which an of­fi­cer re­port­ed­ly com­mit­ted sui­cide, the CoP called on per­sons to pay par­tic­u­lar at­ten­tion to their men­tal health, urg­ing them to be­come their broth­er’s keep­er.

While he once again shied away from rat­ing/grad­ing him­self, Gue­var­ro en­cour­aged the pub­lic to ex­press their views.

“I am a pub­lic ser­vant and I work for you. It is up to you to tell me how I would have func­tioned and what I can do to im­prove,” he said.

Al­though he came un­der fire for his de­ci­sion not to sus­pend the of­fi­cers in­volved in the fa­tal po­lice-in­volved shoot­ing Joshua Sama­roo in Jan­u­ary, Gue­var­ro main­tained he made the best de­ci­sion pos­si­ble whilst ex­plain­ing the le­gal con­straints he faced, which, he not­ed, pre­vent­ed him from dis­clos­ing cru­cial ev­i­dence in the mat­ter.

Ad­dress­ing the racial ten­sions that have to come to the fore with­in re­cent times, Gue­var­ro urged per­sons to ig­nore at­tempts by a se­lect few to di­vide the pop­u­la­tion.