$10M for drone units in budget; devices to be used in crime hotspots, curb prison breaches

Eliz­a­beth Gon­za­les

Se­nior Re­porter

eliz­a­beth.gon­za­[email protected]

Drones are set to play a greater role in crime pre­ven­tion, law en­force­ment and pub­lic safe­ty, with the Gov­ern­ment al­lo­cat­ing $10 mil­lion to es­tab­lish a new Air Guard Drone Unit and up­grade the Po­lice Ser­vice’s Air Sup­port and Drone Unit.

The tech­nol­o­gy is ex­pect­ed to help of­fi­cers mon­i­tor crime hotspots, im­prove traf­fic man­age­ment, and strength­en ef­forts to de­tect and pre­vent prison breach­es in­volv­ing the il­le­gal de­liv­ery of con­tra­band.

It comes as the Prison Of­fi­cers As­so­ci­a­tion re­port­ed well over 100 drone breach­es at the na­tion’s prison fa­cil­i­ties so far this year.

Ef­forts to ob­tain the ex­act sta­tis­tics from se­nior prison of­fi­cials were un­suc­cess­ful.

This year’s breach­es fol­lowed more than 600 drone sight­ings re­port­ed in just six months last year.

The 626 sight­ings were record­ed from April 4 to Oc­to­ber 4, 2025, ac­cord­ing to then act­ing Com­mis­sion­er of Pris­ons Hay­den Forde. Most were re­port­ed at the Max­i­mum Se­cu­ri­ty Prison in Arou­ca. The fig­ure counts sight­ings, not breach­es or de­liv­er­ies of con­tra­band.

“Since April, we have had close to 626 drone sight­ings over var­i­ous pris­ons, so it is show­ing that peo­ple are bent on try­ing to get con­tra­band in­to our sys­tem,” Forde said in Oc­to­ber 2025.

Last year, At­tor­ney Gen­er­al John Je­re­mie re­vealed in Par­lia­ment that drones had en­tered the re­strict­ed area of Teteron Bar­racks, Ch­aguara­mas, where high-risk pris­on­ers were be­ing held.

Je­re­mie said, “I have been cleared to say that the lo­ca­tion that the prob­lem­at­ic in­mates, those lo­ca­tions that they were re­moved to were very re­cent­ly al­so in­fil­trat­ed by two drones, and that is what I have been per­mit­ted to say on that.”

He added, “The De­fence Force, which has cus­tody of those ar­eas, has dealt with that sit­u­a­tion.”

The De­fence Force sep­a­rate­ly re­port­ed two sight­ings be­tween Staubles Bay and Teteron Bar­racks on Ju­ly 24 and 25, 2025, and a third over Teteron on Ju­ly 26. The avail­able re­ports do not es­tab­lish whether those sight­ings over­lap with the in­ci­dents de­scribed by Je­re­mie.

De­spite the in­ter­cep­tions and the beef­ing up of se­cu­ri­ty at prison fa­cil­i­ties, drone-re­lat­ed smug­gling at­tempts have con­tin­ued. On Sep­tem­ber 17, 2026, prison of­fi­cers found a crashed DJI drone car­ry­ing 30 packs of cig­a­rettes on the roof of the Max­i­mum Se­cu­ri­ty Prison. On Oc­to­ber 8, 2026, of­fi­cers re­cov­ered a pack­age con­tain­ing 20 packs of cig­a­rettes sus­pect­ed of be­ing de­liv­ered by drone to the same prison.

Head of the Prison Of­fi­cers As­so­ci­a­tion Ger­ard Gor­don be­lieves the time has come for de­ci­sive ac­tion when it comes to deal­ing with il­le­gal drones.

“It would ap­pear that the chal­lenges sur­round­ing drones are go­ing to con­tin­ue be­cause, cer­tain­ly, the crim­i­nal el­e­ments are not let­ting up in their at­tempts to traf­fic il­le­gal and unau­tho­rised ar­ti­cles in­to the prison via this tech­no­log­i­cal means.

“We con­tin­ue to make our call for the em­ploy­ment of an­ti-drone tech­nol­o­gy to re­al­ly be able to not on­ly sim­ply get a han­dle on this par­tic­u­lar is­sue, but cer­tain­ly to have it to­tal­ly erad­i­cat­ed.

“And so, we lend our sup­port to the Trinidad and To­ba­go Prison Ser­vice and the min­istry (Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty) in hopes of meet­ing that par­tic­u­lar end.”

The TTPS is al­so wel­com­ing the al­lo­ca­tion to its drone unit. Deputy Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice Ju­nior Ben­jamin told Guardian Me­dia that drones will help of­fi­cers fight crime in hotspot ar­eas.

“We have to un­der­stand the rea­son why we need drones with­in the ser­vice be­cause it helps in crime pre­ven­tion, es­pe­cial­ly in hotspot sur­veil­lance. If we are go­ing to im­prove greater po­lice vis­i­bil­i­ty, es­pe­cial­ly in high-risk ar­eas and where we see a lot of things hap­pen­ing, drones will help us tremen­dous­ly in terms of vis­i­bil­i­ty, to get in­for­ma­tion and to be able to see things, es­pe­cial­ly in some ar­eas.

Drones are al­ready used by the Po­lice Ser­vice in its coastal and ma­rine units and play an ac­tive role in op­er­a­tions there.

But the DCP in charge of Ad­min­is­tra­tion and Op­er­a­tional Sup­port added that drones will al­so play a role in of­fi­cers’ safe­ty and trans­paren­cy.

“When we think about of­fi­cers’ safe­ty, in terms of op­er­a­tions that we go (on), we recog­nise the im­por­tance of hav­ing those drones there as very crit­i­cal so that we are able to see what is hap­pen­ing in those op­er­a­tions. And it al­so helps with the in­tegri­ty that is need­ed to en­sure that if any­thing ad­verse hap­pens, we can ac­cout to the pub­lic. There­fore, it is im­por­tant.”

Ben­jamin ex­plained that the up­grade of the drone unit would al­so lead to greater ca­pa­bil­i­ties in search and res­cue and traf­fic man­age­ment. Traf­fic con­ges­tion has re­cent­ly be­come an is­sue af­ter mo­torists en­dured hours of de­lays head­ing in­to Port-of-Spain fol­low­ing ve­hic­u­lar ac­ci­dents and a traf­fic light hic­cup.

“In terms of search and res­cue op­er­a­tions, the po­lice are al­ways called out to find per­sons in places you can’t go. The drones will al­so help us in this area. Very in­ter­est­ing for us as well is that traf­fic con­ges­tion is some­thing that we are see­ing more and more preva­lent now, and we be­lieve it could help in traf­fic man­age­ment, as we seek to al­le­vi­ate that. It is go­ing to help us with that,” Ben­jamin said, adding that drone tech­nol­o­gy will al­so be used for dis­as­ter and emer­gency re­spons­es.

Guardian Me­dia was un­able to get on­to the De­fence Force about the al­lo­ca­tion for the Air Guard Drone Unit.

Page 152 of the 2027 Pub­lic Sec­tor In­vest­ment Pro­gramme (PSIP), pub­lished on Oc­to­ber 12, pro­vides $5 mil­lion to es­tab­lish an Un­manned Aer­i­al Ve­hi­cle Unit with­in the Trinidad and To­ba­go Air Guard.

The PSIP states, “This Unit is ex­pect­ed to en­hance in­tel­li­gence, sur­veil­lance, tar­get ac­qui­si­tion and re­con­nais­sance ca­pa­bil­i­ties.”

The doc­u­ment does not iden­ti­fy the num­ber or type of drones, the sup­pli­er, the de­liv­ery date or the unit’s an­nu­al op­er­at­ing cost.

The Air Guard’s to­tal 2027 de­vel­op­ment al­lo­ca­tion is $9.7 mil­lion. The pro­posed UAV unit rep­re­sents about 52 per cent of that al­lo­ca­tion.

The Coast Guard had re­ceived two drones do­nat­ed by the Unit­ed Na­tions Of­fice on Drugs and Crime in the 2024 fi­nan­cial year. The do­na­tion was record­ed in the Min­istry of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty’s ap­pro­pri­a­tion ac­count pub­lished by the Au­di­tor Gen­er­al. Their cur­rent op­er­a­tional sta­tus has not been es­tab­lished.

For the TTPS, $5 mil­lion is al­lo­cat­ed for the up­grade of the Air Sup­port/Drone Unit. In 2026, $2 mil­lion was al­lo­cat­ed, lat­er re­vised down­wards to $1.6 mil­lion.

The PSIP al­lo­ca­tion for the Air Sup­port/Drone Unit stat­ed that the mon­ey would be used for six in­dus­tri­al or com­mer­cial-grade map­ping drones. The pub­lished bud­get does not es­tab­lish whether all six drones were pur­chased and de­liv­ered.

The 2027 PSIP lists bomb dis­pos­al trucks among sev­er­al ve­hi­cle types un­der a $20 mil­lion Po­lice Ser­vice ve­hi­cle al­lo­ca­tion. Bomb dis­pos­al trucks al­so ap­peared in ear­li­er in­vest­ment plans. The pub­lished en­tries do not es­tab­lish whether the ear­li­er ve­hi­cles were pur­chased or whether the new al­lo­ca­tion is for re­place­ment or ad­di­tion­al ve­hi­cles.