Security experts divided on CoP’s impact so far

KEVON FELMINE

Se­nior Re­porter

[email protected]

Se­cu­ri­ty ex­perts say suc­ces­sive states of emer­gency have de­fined Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice Al­lis­ter Gue­var­ro’s first year in of­fice, re­shap­ing how the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice (TTPS) de­ploys re­sources and fu­elling de­bate over whether the or­gan­i­sa­tion is op­er­at­ing with­in cri­sis con­di­tions or a long-term polic­ing mod­el.

Gue­var­ro was ap­point­ed Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice in June 2025, tak­ing com­mand of the TTPS at a time when na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty op­er­a­tions were al­ready shaped by emer­gency polic­ing frame­works.

Crim­i­nol­o­gist Dar­ius Figuera yes­ter­day said the first year of Gue­var­ro’s tenure has been de­fined by that op­er­at­ing en­vi­ron­ment.

“The com­mis­sion­er, the present new com­mis­sion­er’s first year has been a year of state-of-emer­gency polic­ing,” Figuera said.

He said re­peat­ed use of emer­gency mea­sures con­cen­trates po­lice re­sources on im­me­di­ate threats to the State.

“In that sit­u­a­tion, it means the re­sources that you can ap­ply to se­r­i­al rapists, se­r­i­al mur­der­ers, se­r­i­al rob­bers, some­thing has to give.”

Figuera said this has im­pli­ca­tions for wider polic­ing func­tions.

“In per­sis­tent states of emer­gency, very im­por­tant as­pects of the en­tire fo­cus of the TTPS fall by the way­side,” he ex­plained

He al­so point­ed to long-stand­ing struc­tur­al chal­lenges with­in the or­gan­i­sa­tion, which he ti­tled The Four Horse­men of the Polic­ing Apoc­a­lypse: pro­mo­tion, dis­ci­pline, com­mand and con­trol and or­gan­ised crime with­in the TTPS.

Figuera said it was too ear­ly to ful­ly as­sess the com­mis­sion­er’s per­for­mance un­der con­tin­ued emer­gency con­di­tions. He said lead­er­ship as­sess­ment is more mean­ing­ful out­side of that frame­work.

“So, it will be bet­ter to judge him when we’re out­side of a state of emer­gency,” he said.

Mean­while, for­mer com­mis­sion­er of po­lice Gar­ry Grif­fith be­lieves the ma­jor­i­ty of cit­i­zens would rate Gue­var­ro’s first year in of­fice poor­ly if asked. He said while many peo­ple may have neg­a­tive com­ments about the CoP, the role is among the most de­mand­ing pub­lic po­si­tions in the coun­try, along­side the na­tion­al men’s foot­ball coach.

“As it per­tains to the Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice, you can be do­ing the right things for six, sev­en months, and just one thing and just one mis­take you make, peo­ple are go­ing to re­mem­ber you for it,” Grif­fith said.

“I think we al­so need to ap­pre­ci­ate the fact that Mr Gue­var­ro was just thrown to the wolves. It was a bap­tism of fire. To be a com­mis­sion­er of po­lice, I think you need to have at least 15 years of ex­pe­ri­ence at a se­nior man­age­ment lev­el in law en­force­ment, and I do not think he ac­tu­al­ly had that. He was like a su­per­in­ten­dent, who is mid­dle man­age­ment.”

Grif­fith said the tran­si­tion from mid­dle man­age­ment to lead­ing a na­tion­al po­lice ser­vice is sig­nif­i­cant, giv­en the scale of op­er­a­tional re­spon­si­bil­i­ty. He said mov­ing from su­per­vis­ing small units to over­see­ing the full or­gan­i­sa­tion re­quires a ma­jor ad­just­ment in lead­er­ship ca­pac­i­ty.

“It may not take a year for that per­son to be able to move from that OJT to be­ing a suc­cess­ful se­nior man­ag­er in an in­sti­tu­tion with 7,500 po­lice, 100 sta­tions, 1,700 ve­hi­cles and a bud­get of $3 bil­lion, so he would be mak­ing mis­takes,” he said.

“It is hoped that it will im­prove in the sec­ond year, but as I said, when you look in com­par­i­son to Mc­Don­ald Ja­cobs and Er­la Christo­pher, I think he did a bet­ter job so far, even though he has made many mis­takes.”

Grif­fith said Gue­var­ro has al­so shown some ac­ces­si­bil­i­ty to the me­dia and more ground pres­ence than some pre­de­ces­sors, not­ing ear­li­er com­mis­sion­ers were of­ten less vis­i­ble pub­licly.

He added that polic­ing re­form should not in­volve “rein­vent­ing the wheel,l” but build­ing on poli­cies that pre­vi­ous­ly im­proved pub­lic con­fi­dence in the TTPS.

Grif­fith al­so ar­gued that mea­sur­ing po­lice lead­er­ship sole­ly on crime sta­tis­tics would be mis­lead­ing, giv­en that emer­gency pow­ers ex­pand po­lice au­thor­i­ty to ar­rest and de­tain in­di­vid­u­als un­der sus­pi­cion.

Al­so chim­ing in, re­gion­al se­cu­ri­ty ex­pert and strate­gic se­cu­ri­ty con­sul­tant Dr Garvin Heer­ah said any as­sess­ment of the com­mis­sion­er’s per­for­mance must be ev­i­dence-based and mea­sured against out­comes rather than per­cep­tion. He said Gue­var­ro is op­er­at­ing in a com­plex se­cu­ri­ty en­vi­ron­ment shaped by or­gan­ised crime, gang ac­tiv­i­ty and transna­tion­al crim­i­nal net­works.

Heer­ah said there have been ear­ly steps to­wards strength­en­ing in­tel­li­gence-led polic­ing and im­prov­ing op­er­a­tional co­or­di­na­tion with­in the TTPS. How­ev­er, he said sig­nif­i­cant chal­lenges re­main in pub­lic com­mu­ni­ca­tion, con­fi­dence in polic­ing and in­ter­nal in­sti­tu­tion­al strength­en­ing.

He said com­mu­ni­ca­tion is now cen­tral to polic­ing ef­fec­tive­ness.

“In to­day’s en­vi­ron­ment, ef­fec­tive com­mu­ni­ca­tion, trans­paren­cy, and time­ly in­for­ma­tion dis­sem­i­na­tion are crit­i­cal to main­tain­ing pub­lic trust,” Heer­ah said.

He said the pri­or­i­ty re­mains build­ing a more ac­count­able and in­tel­li­gence-dri­ven po­lice ser­vice ca­pa­ble of im­prov­ing na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty out­comes.