Police phone bills top $93M from 2021 to 2026

Eliz­a­beth Gon­za­les

Se­nior Re­porter

eliz­a­beth.gon­za­[email protected]

The Trinidad and To­ba­go Po­lice Ser­vice paid TSTT more than $93 mil­lion in tele­phone bills over four fi­nan­cial years, in­clud­ing $32.2 mil­lion in a sin­gle year, while three cas­es in­volv­ing miss­ing cell­phones re­main un­der in­ves­ti­ga­tion.

The TTPS has not dis­closed how many phones are in­volved in the three cas­es, their val­ue or whether any de­vices or mon­ey have been re­cov­ered.

The $93 mil­lion fig­ure, dis­closed in a No­vem­ber 4 Free­dom of In­for­ma­tion re­sponse, cov­ers all tele­phone ser­vices, in­clud­ing fixed lines, mo­bile, air­time and da­ta. TTPS did not sep­a­rate those charges, leav­ing the amount spent on mo­bile phone bills un­clear.

For two fi­nan­cial pe­ri­ods, 21 hand­sets were pur­chased for use by the TTPS for $127,000. These com­prised 19 Sam­sung phones and two Ap­ple iPhones.

The fig­ures were dis­closed in a No­vem­ber 4 Free­dom of In­for­ma­tion re­sponse to at­tor­ney Keron Ramkhal­whan, act­ing for Vishal Per­sad.

The $93 mil­lion ex­cludes an­oth­er fi­nan­cial year, 2024–2025, be­cause that year’s amount is in­cor­rect­ly print­ed in the re­sponse.

The four en­tries add up to $93,147,216.56. They cov­er the pe­ri­ods 2021–2022, 2022–2023, 2023–2024 and 2025–2026. The 2024–2025 en­try is 18,569,05.84

TTPS lists no out­stand­ing bal­ance for any of the five fi­nan­cial years.

The an­nu­al pay­ments fall from $32.22 mil­lion in 2021–2022 to $13.41 mil­lion in 2025–2026. The FOIA re­sponse does not ex­plain what led to the change.

On Oc­to­ber 9, Guardian Me­dia re­port­ed that the TTPS paid $793.89 mil­lion in over­time be­tween Jan­u­ary 2024 and Au­gust 2026, ac­cord­ing to fig­ures ob­tained through a Free­dom of In­for­ma­tion (FOI) re­quest.

The first eight months of 2026 al­ready ex­ceed­ed the en­tire over­time bill for 2025 by $6.35 mil­lion.

Year Amount Paid

2021–2022 $32,219,994.79

2022–2023 $28,392,638.16

2023–2024 $19,128,733.30

2024–2025 Fig­ure mis­print­ed

2025–2026 $13,405,850.31

Subto­tal of four read­able years $93,147,216.56

The FOIA sought records from Jan­u­ary 1, 2021 to Sep­tem­ber 27, 2026. It al­so asked which po­lice sta­tions or oth­er premis­es had tele­phone ser­vices cut off for non-pay­ment, and when those ser­vices were re­stored.

TTPS di­rect­ed the ap­pli­cant to its pay­ments ta­ble. That ta­ble con­tains no sta­tion names, dis­con­nec­tion dates or restora­tion dates.

On the miss­ing phones, the po­lice ser­vice said: “We are in­struct­ed that there are three (3) cas­es where tele­phones pur­chased are un­ac­count­ed for, lost or not re­turned. These mat­ters are un­der in­ves­ti­ga­tion.”

It gives no de­tails of the in­ves­ti­ga­tions.

TTPS said it pur­chased 516 phones dur­ing the re­quest­ed pe­ri­od. It did not give a year­ly break­down or quan­ti­ties for each mod­el.

The ap­pli­ca­tion al­so cov­ered fixed-line phones.

For hand­sets, TTPS pur­chased a quan­ti­ty val­ued at $127,339.34 for the pe­ri­od 2021 to 2026.

For the 2021–2023 pe­ri­od, 11 Sam­sung hand­set en­tries were list­ed, with a com­bined val­ue of $62,100.34. The most ex­pen­sive was the Sam­sung Galaxy Note 10 Plus, val­ued at $10,950.19, fol­lowed by the Sam­sung Galaxy Note at $9,443.81 and the Sam­sung Galaxy S10 Plus at $8,806.50.

Oth­er hand­sets list­ed dur­ing that pe­ri­od in­clud­ed the Sam­sung Galaxy S10, val­ued at $7,481.25; Sam­sung Galaxy S9 Plus, $6,592.50; Sam­sung Galaxy A80, $6,592.50; Sam­sung Galaxy S9, $5,625; Sam­sung Galaxy A51, $2,099.15; Sam­sung Galaxy A10s, $1,771.88; Sam­sung Galaxy A31, $1,666.13; and Sam­sung Galaxy A10, $1,071.43.

For the 2023–2026 pe­ri­od, Sam­sung and Ap­ple hand­sets had a com­bined val­ue of $65,239. The Ap­ple en­tries ac­count­ed for $24,598, com­pris­ing an iPhone Pro val­ued at $12,399 and an iPhone 14 Pro Max val­ued at $12,199.

The Sam­sung hand­sets list­ed for 2023–2026 to­talled $40,641. These in­clud­ed the Sam­sung Flip Z, val­ued at $11,849; Sam­sung S23, $7,349; Sam­sung A23 5G, $5,999; Sam­sung S22, $3,599; Sam­sung A54, $3,049; Sam­sung A33, $2,299; Sam­sung A22, $2,149; and Sam­sung A23, $2,049.

Over­all, Sam­sung hand­sets pur­chased were val­ued at $102,741.34 across the two pe­ri­ods, while Ap­ple hand­sets ac­count­ed for $24,598, bring­ing the com­bined list­ed val­ue to $127,339.34.

Re­gard­ing pro­cure­ment, the TTPS said awards were guid­ed by the rel­e­vant pro­cure­ment leg­is­la­tion, but did not iden­ti­fy the ac­tu­al award method or oth­er de­tails.

The TTPS ex­plained that phones are is­sued by the Com­mis­sion­er for of­fi­cial use. Re­cip­i­ents in­clude heads of di­vi­sions and branch­es, civil­ian man­agers, se­nior of­fi­cers and oth­ers whom the Com­mis­sion­er con­sid­ers to re­quire them for their du­ties.

“The max­i­mum month­ly lim­it is five hun­dred dol­lars ($500.00), un­less oth­er­wise ap­proved,” the re­sponse stat­ed.

Phones must be re­turned to the Fi­nance Branch when an of­fi­cer re­tires, trans­fers or re­signs.

The re­sponse does not give the num­ber of ac­tive mo­bile lines or de­tail how of­ten spend­ing above $500 was ap­proved.

Ques­tions about po­lice tele­phone costs have been raised in Par­lia­ment for more than a decade.

On Sep­tem­ber 25, 2014, then op­po­si­tion leader Dr Kei­th Row­ley ques­tioned the con­trols on po­lice tele­phone spend­ing dur­ing a Stand­ing Fi­nance Com­mit­tee sit­ting.

“What con­trols are in place? Are there lim­its to per­son­al use?” he asked.

Gary Grif­fith, then na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty min­is­ter, said the tele­phone bud­get al­so cov­ered in­for­ma­tion tech­nol­o­gy, in­ter­net, broad­band, mo­bile phones and da­ta net­works. He de­scribed ser­vices reach­ing more than 102 lo­ca­tions at 77 po­lice sta­tions.

That was an ex­pla­na­tion of the bud­get at the time.

Par­lia­ment’s Pub­lic Ad­min­is­tra­tion and Ap­pro­pri­a­tions Com­mit­tee re­turned to the is­sue dur­ing its ex­am­i­na­tion of TTPS spend­ing for 2018–2019.

Its re­port, pre­sent­ed in March 2020, record­ed ques­tions about of­fi­cial phone use, bills above the $500 lim­it with­out the com­mis­sion­er’s ap­proval, in­ter­na­tion­al calls and lost cel­lu­lar phones.

The re­port al­so in­clud­ed Grif­fith’s ev­i­dence as com­mis­sion­er at a March 28, 2019 hear­ing. He said de­lays in re­leas­ing funds af­fect­ed pay­ment of po­lice bills.

“We have sit­u­a­tions where TSTT they will dis­con­nect us,” Grif­fith told the com­mit­tee then.

Then head of Fi­nance Maria Harte said mon­ey re­ceived dur­ing that fi­nan­cial year had been used to pay pre­vi­ous years’ bills.

On Jan­u­ary 27, 2020, then fi­nance min­is­ter Colm Im­bert told Par­lia­ment that TTPS had re­ceived $11.6 mil­lion to clear tele­phone bills.

On Jan­u­ary 23, 2023, he re­port­ed an­oth­er $4.6 mil­lion in ex­pen­di­ture to “clear off long out­stand­ing bills for the Trinidad and To­ba­go Po­lice Ser­vice”.

Those state­ments con­cern ear­li­er pay­ments.

Guardian Me­dia asked Deputy Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice Ju­nior Ben­jamin to clar­i­fy the mo­bile por­tion of the tele­phone bill, pro­vide the cor­rect 2024–2025 fig­ure, ex­plain hand­set pro­cure­ment costs and give de­tails of the three miss­ing-phone in­ves­ti­ga­tions.

Ben­jamin said he was care­ful­ly re­view­ing the ques­tions and would pro­vide a full re­sponse soon.