Alexander vows closer scrutiny of TTPS spending after $93M phone bill

Jesse Ramdeo

Se­nior Re­porter

[email protected]

Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Roger Alexan­der says “some­thing was go­ing wrong” for the Trinidad and To­ba­go Po­lice Ser­vice (TTPS) to ac­cu­mu­late more than $93 mil­lion in tele­phone bills over four fi­nan­cial years. He said his min­istry was tak­ing a more hands-on ap­proach to spend­ing and ac­count­abil­i­ty.

Alexan­der ac­knowl­edged that the bill was among the fi­nan­cial oblig­a­tions in­her­it­ed by the cur­rent ad­min­is­tra­tion. He said the Gov­ern­ment must now ex­am­ine how such a sub­stan­tial amount was al­lowed to ac­cu­mu­late.

He was re­spond­ing to ques­tions from Guardian Me­dia on Sun­day af­ter the Na­tion­al Day of Re­mem­brance wreath-lay­ing cer­e­mo­ny at Memo­r­i­al Park in Port-of-Spain.

The min­is­ter ques­tioned how the Po­lice Ser­vice could in­cur a tele­phone bill of that size over four years, par­tic­u­lar­ly when mem­bers of the pub­lic were re­port­ed­ly hav­ing dif­fi­cul­ty reach­ing po­lice sta­tions.

“Now, how does one ac­cu­mu­late a bill of that mag­ni­tude over a four-year pe­ri­od? Now, some­thing was go­ing wrong, but then per­sons were still say­ing that they were call­ing and they were not get­ting through and all these things. So there’s a num­ber of is­sues in­volved there,” Alexan­der said.

He main­tained that the cur­rent ad­min­is­tra­tion had in­her­it­ed the sit­u­a­tion and was work­ing to ad­dress long­stand­ing is­sues.

“It’s about what we in­her­it­ed. And you’re here four years. We weren’t here for four years. So every­thing we met, we have to now treat with. And that is the prob­lem, you see,” he said.

Alexan­der said he was tak­ing a dif­fer­ent ap­proach to man­ag­ing the min­istry, with greater per­son­al in­volve­ment in its op­er­a­tions and fi­nan­cial de­ci­sions.

He said he would no longer ac­cept pay­ment re­quests with­out first un­der­stand­ing the rea­sons for the ex­pen­di­ture.

“It’s about a dif­fer­ent ap­proach and a more hands-on ap­proach by the min­is­ter in his min­istries. So no­body’s telling me, well, you know, well, we have to pay this. I want to know why. You see, why this reach so much? I want to know why. Show me the rea­son. This is hap­pen­ing now,” he said.

The min­is­ter said he speaks with Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Al­lis­ter Gue­var­ro dai­ly about a range of mat­ters, de­scrib­ing their re­la­tion­ship as one built on open com­mu­ni­ca­tion.

“I speak to the Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er every day on a num­ber of is­sues. Al­right, so both of us have what we call an open-door pol­i­cy,” Alexan­der said.

He said the ap­proach should ex­tend through­out the Po­lice Ser­vice, par­tic­u­lar­ly in its en­gage­ment with the pub­lic.

“So we want to demon­strate that, you know what? It be­gins with us,” he said.

The com­ments fol­low a Free­dom of In­for­ma­tion re­sponse dat­ed No­vem­ber 4, which dis­closed that the TTPS paid TSTT $93,147,216.56 over four fi­nan­cial years be­tween 2021–2022 and 2025–2026.

The high­est an­nu­al ex­pen­di­ture was record­ed in 2021–2022, when the Po­lice Ser­vice paid $32.22 mil­lion. It paid $28.39 mil­lion in 2022–2023 and $19.12 mil­lion in 2023–2024. Ex­pen­di­ture then fell to $13.4 mil­lion in 2025–2026.

The to­tal ex­cludes ex­pen­di­ture for 2024–2025 be­cause the amount was in­cor­rect­ly print­ed in the TTPS re­sponse.

The $93 mil­lion cov­ers all tele­phone ser­vices, in­clud­ing fixed lines, mo­bile ser­vices, air­time and da­ta. The Po­lice Ser­vice did not pro­vide a break­down by cat­e­go­ry.

The TTPS al­so dis­closed that 516 phones were pur­chased dur­ing the pe­ri­od un­der re­view. Three cas­es in­volv­ing de­vices that were un­ac­count­ed for, lost or not re­turned re­main un­der in­ves­ti­ga­tion.

The re­sponse did not state how many phones were in­volved in the cas­es, their val­ue or whether any de­vices or mon­ey had been re­cov­ered.

The Po­lice Ser­vice al­so con­firmed that of­fi­cers’ is­sued of­fi­cial phones are sub­ject to a max­i­mum month­ly lim­it of $500, un­less oth­er­wise ap­proved.

Alexan­der has al­so dis­missed con­cerns that De­mo­c­ra­t­ic gains in the Unit­ed States midterm elec­tions could af­fect se­cu­ri­ty co­op­er­a­tion be­tween Wash­ing­ton and Port-of -Spain.

Asked whether the po­lit­i­cal shift, which saw De­moc­rats take con­trol of both cham­bers of Con­gress, could af­fect Trinidad and To­ba­go’s se­cu­ri­ty arrange­ments with the US, Alexan­der said he did not an­tic­i­pate any dif­fi­cul­ties.

“How can it? We came from, in fact, we have a de­mo­c­ra­t­ic coun­try. I hope I an­swered your ques­tion. It’s as easy as that. There’s no is­sues,” he said.

He said democ­ra­cy should be em­braced.

“We were elect­ed through democ­ra­cy. And we love when democ­ra­cy pre­vails,” Alexan­der said.

His com­ments fol­low sim­i­lar as­sur­ances from Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar, who pre­vi­ous­ly dis­missed con­cerns that De­mo­c­ra­t­ic gains in the midterms could un­der­mine Trinidad and To­ba­go’s re­la­tion­ship with Wash­ing­ton.

Per­sad-Bisses­sar de­scribed the re­sults as pre­dictable, say­ing midterm elec­tions have his­tor­i­cal­ly pre­sent­ed chal­lenges for the par­ty oc­cu­py­ing the White House.

“These midterm re­sults were very pre­dictable and in line with the cy­cle of midterm elec­tion re­sults go­ing back decades,” she said.

The is­sue has drawn at­ten­tion amid the ex­pan­sion of se­cu­ri­ty co­op­er­a­tion be­tween Trinidad and To­ba­go and the US un­der the Trump ad­min­is­tra­tion.

That co­op­er­a­tion in­cludes the Shield of the Amer­i­c­as, al­so known as the Amer­i­c­as Counter Car­tel Coali­tion (A3C), which fo­cus­es on re­gion­al mar­itime in­ter­dic­tion, in­tel­li­gence shar­ing and ef­forts to com­bat transna­tion­al drug and weapons traf­fick­ing.

The US has al­so de­ployed a con­tin­gent of Navy SEALs to Trinidad and To­ba­go in an ad­vi­so­ry and lo­gis­ti­cal ca­pac­i­ty. They are as­sist­ing with se­cu­ri­ty ca­pa­bil­i­ties, bor­der pro­tec­tion and train­ing for mem­bers of the lo­cal pro­tec­tive ser­vices.

Alexan­der al­so con­firmed that the pro­cure­ment process for po­lice body-worn cam­eras was near­ing com­ple­tion as the Gov­ern­ment moved to ex­pand the Po­lice Ser­vice’s ca­pac­i­ty to record in­ter­ac­tions be­tween of­fi­cers and mem­bers of the pub­lic.

The de­vel­op­ment comes amid re­newed at­ten­tion to body-cam­era use un­der the Gov­ern­ment’s re­vised Zones of Spe­cial Op­er­a­tions leg­is­la­tion.

“It’s al­most at the end. I un­der­stand there are per­sons who are show­ing in­ter­est. But be­fore I say that, let me tell you what we don’t want. Trinidad and To­ba­go have an old 1946 strat­e­gy. They men­tioned that they are go­ing to get it from Eng­land, but they go down to an­oth­er lo­ca­tion far far, get it for $10 for 17, bring it and dis­guise it un­der the Eng­lish sys­tem,” Alexan­der said.

Per­sad-Bisses­sar pre­vi­ous­ly said po­lice of­fi­cers con­duct­ing op­er­a­tions in des­ig­nat­ed spe­cial zones would be re­quired to wear body cam­eras. De­fence Force mem­bers pro­vid­ing mil­i­tary as­sis­tance would al­so be sub­ject to re­quire­ments for record­ing op­er­a­tions.

The pro­posed safe­guards in­clude manda­to­ry hu­man rights and use-of-force train­ing, con­flict de-es­ca­la­tion pro­ce­dures, weapons reg­is­tra­tion and the for­mal record­ing of com­plaints.

The body-cam­era re­quire­ment was a ma­jor point of con­tention dur­ing de­bate on the pre­vi­ous Zones of Spe­cial Op­er­a­tions Bill.

How­ev­er, the avail­abil­i­ty of op­er­a­tional cam­eras with­in the TTPS re­mains a con­cern.

In Jan­u­ary, se­nior po­lice of­fi­cers told Guardian Me­dia that few­er than 200 body cam­eras were op­er­a­tional across the ser­vice.

Deputy Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice Ju­nior Ben­jamin said at the time that about 190 cam­eras were ac­tive, while Gue­var­ro lat­er es­ti­mat­ed that about 180 were us­able.

More re­cent­ly, Gue­var­ro said just over 100 cam­eras were op­er­a­tional and as­signed to front­line of­fi­cers. He al­so iden­ti­fied bat­tery life as a sig­nif­i­cant chal­lenge, say­ing the cam­eras last­ed about 90 min­utes to two hours.

The TTPS had pre­vi­ous­ly an­nounced an ex­pres­sion of in­ter­est in June for the sup­ply, de­liv­ery and com­mis­sion­ing of ad­di­tion­al body-worn cam­era sys­tems, de­scrib­ing the tech­nol­o­gy as es­sen­tial to trans­par­ent and ac­count­able polic­ing.

The Gov­ern­ment al­so can­celled a near­ly $25 mil­lion con­tract to sup­ply 3,000 body-worn cam­eras, say­ing the de­ci­sion would save tax­pay­ers mil­lions of dol­lars.