Minister gives top cop A+ rating

KAY-MARIE FLETCH­ER

Se­nior Re­porter

kay-marie.fletch­[email protected]

One year in­to his tenure as head of the Trinidad and To­ba­go Po­lice Ser­vice (TTPS), Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice (CoP) Al­lis­ter Gue­var­ro has earned high praise from Min­is­ter of Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty Roger Alexan­der.

De­spite pub­lic calls for Gue­var­ro’s res­ig­na­tion over his han­dling of the Joshua Sama­roo and Ka­ia Sealey case, Alexan­der yes­ter­day gave the top cop a strong en­dorse­ment as he of­fi­cial­ly marked his first year in of­fice.

Asked to as­sess Gue­var­ro’s first-year per­for­mance, Alexan­der gave the CoP his ap­proval.

Speak­ing to Guardian Me­dia out­side the Par­lia­ment yes­ter­day, Alexan­der said, “Ex­cel­lent, ex­treme­ly ex­cel­lent. He should be giv­en an ad­di­tion­al grade for his ef­forts. You know why? A lot of peo­ple are talk­ing about trust and con­fi­dence, but that’s the same of­fi­cer that took his ini­tia­tive the oth­er day when there was an is­sue with trans­porta­tion, and there were peo­ple jump­ing in the po­lice ve­hi­cle and hav­ing good con­ver­sa­tion. That’s speaks to lead­er­ship.”

Ex­cel­lent is ef­fec­tive­ly an A+ rat­ing.

Alexan­der was re­fer­ring to the three-day na­tion­wide shut­down by maxi taxi op­er­a­tors last month, which caused trans­porta­tion chaos for mem­bers of the pub­lic. This prompt­ed Gue­var­ro to utilise TTPS bus­es to trans­port strand­ed com­muters home.

Gue­var­ro was ap­point­ed Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice 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.

Gue­var­ro is cur­rent­ly 50 years old.

Mean­while, Alexan­der is call­ing on po­lice of­fi­cers to seek help if they ex­pe­ri­ence any signs of men­tal health is­sues.

This fol­lows the re­cent deaths by sui­cide of two of­fi­cers.

Alexan­der said, “That’s some­thing we have iden­ti­fied. We of­fer an op­por­tu­ni­ty for the peo­ple who seem to have an is­sue. But the first thing you have to do is iden­ti­fy that you have an is­sue. And once they do that, we of­ten send them for out­side help.”

On Tues­day, PC Yoha­nis Joseph, who was at­tached to the In­ter-Agency Task Force (IATF), al­leged­ly took his own life at his home along Madoos­ingh Dri­ve, Bois Bande, San­gre Grande.

PC Joseph was found ly­ing in an un­fin­ished con­crete struc­ture, bleed­ing from a head wound.

Re­spond­ing of­fi­cers found him still alive and rushed him to the San­gre Grande Hos­pi­tal, where he was pro­nounced dead at 2.04 pm.

Two days lat­er, 32-year-old Rafael Joseph was found naked and un­re­spon­sive in his cell at the East­ern Cor­rec­tion­al and Re­ha­bil­i­ta­tion Cen­tre (ECRC), San­ta Rosa, around 8 am.

Joseph had been await­ing ex­tra­di­tion to the Unit­ed States in con­nec­tion with an un­fold­ing nar­cotics traf­fick­ing in­ves­ti­ga­tion.

How­ev­er, Joseph’s rel­a­tives have round­ly re­ject­ed claims that he re­port­ed­ly killed him­self while in the cus­tody of prison of­fi­cials.

In­sist­ing his demise was the re­sult of foul play, they are now plead­ing for an­swers from Pris­ons Com­mis­sion­er Car­los Cor­raspe and Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Al­lis­ter Gue­var­ro.

When asked if foul play was in­volved in any of the in­ci­dents, Alexan­der said he could not com­ment on it as the in­ves­ti­ga­tions are on­go­ing.