After a year in office: Guevarro defends protest restrictions, cites intelligence

An­na-Lisa Paul

Se­nior Re­porter

an­[email protected]

As he moves seam­less­ly in­to his sec­ond year as Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice (CoP), Al­lis­ter Gue­var­ro is firm­ly fo­cused on mak­ing T&T a safer place for all.

In­di­cat­ing this dur­ing an in­ter­view at the Po­lice Ad­min­is­tra­tion Build­ing, Port-of-Spain, last Fri­day, Gue­var­ro ad­dressed some of the recog­nised highs and con­tro­ver­sial lows that de­fined his first year in of­fice.

Wel­com­ing the crit­i­cism, which he said he us­es to build him­self and im­prove the gen­er­al op­er­a­tions of the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice (TTPS), the top cop wast­ed no time in re­spond­ing to a num­ber of is­sues that con­tin­ue to at­tract wide­spread pub­lic at­ten­tion – all whilst deny­ing he was the “blue-eyed boy.”

While the ques­tion of ac­count­abil­i­ty and trans­paren­cy aris­es every time there is a fa­tal po­lice shoot­ing, with re­newed calls for body cam­eras for all po­lice of­fi­cers, Gue­var­ro briefly re­vis­it­ed what he said was an in­her­it­ed debt and al­leged pur­chase of sub-stan­dard equip­ment, and re­vealed what steps he had tak­en to rec­ti­fy the mat­ter.

While he has pre­vi­ous­ly dis­closed the chal­lenges he en­coun­tered in this area since as­sum­ing of­fice, he said a re­view of pri­or poli­cies found the TTPS had been locked in to mil­lion-dol­lar con­tracts that were not ben­e­fit­ting the ser­vice, gov­ern­ment or the pub­lic.

And as tech­no­log­i­cal up­grades con­tin­ue con­stant­ly, he went on, “These cam­eras were not suit­able at this point in time.”

In or­der to save a few dol­lars, the Com­mis­sion­er said he opt­ed against in­ject­ing any more mon­ey in­to pre­serv­ing and main­tain­ing the sys­tem.

“I took that de­ci­sion to have re­moved the in­cur­ring debt and to move for­ward with this new pro­cure­ment.

“We are cur­rent­ly prob­a­bly mid-stage, so the pub­lic will soon be hap­py to hear that the Ex­pres­sion of In­ter­est will be com­plet­ed and then we can go on to the eval­u­a­tion and ex­am­i­na­tion of all the bids and we can go for­ward with pro­cure­ment.”

Look­ing back at the year past and the ma­jor mile­stones that de­fined his term from the as­sump­tion of of­fice on June 17, 2025, Gue­var­ro re­flect­ed, “I can safe­ly say that we’ve had some ma­jor suc­cess­es in the re­duc­tion of crime.”

Fol­low­ing a re­cent as­sess­ment of what the au­thor­i­ties re­fer to as SoE 1, SoE 2 and SoE 3, he said an analy­sis of the da­ta col­lect­ed and col­lat­ed dur­ing the three SoEs found, “SoE 2 was de­ter­mined to be the one that had the great­est ben­e­fit in terms of re­duc­tion in homi­cides out of the three.”

“And SoE 3, which is the cur­rent one, is deemed to be the one with the great­est over­all im­pact on se­ri­ous re­port­ed vi­o­lent crimes.”

Con­firm­ing this da­ta had been pre­sent­ed to the Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Coun­cil (NSC), Gue­var­ro claimed, “So there is a bal­anc­ing of the scales.”

He point­ed to an emer­gence out of a high in 2024, which he la­belled “his­tor­i­cal” in terms of the num­ber of homi­cides.

In 2024, T&T record­ed a to­tal of 615 mur­ders, mark­ing it as the dead­liest year in the coun­try’s his­to­ry, with this fig­ure sur­pass­ing the pre­vi­ous record of 605 mur­ders set in 2022.

The TTPS was able to get the mur­der rate down to 369 at the end of 2025.

The CoP de­clared, “We had a his­tor­i­cal drop and we are ac­tu­al­ly main­tain­ing that po­si­tion.”

“We are ac­tu­al­ly a lit­tle low­er than it was, even for last year, so knock on wood, we shall con­tin­ue to work to­wards main­tain­ing that and even get­ting that fig­ure even low­er.”

Point­ing to the re­duc­tion in the num­ber of se­ri­ous re­port­ed crimes, he ac­knowl­edged, “We may want to say the pub­lic is not feel­ing safe and the pub­lic is not see­ing that re­duc­tion in crime, but the sta­tis­tics speak for them­selves.”

With these trends be­ing tracked by the Crime and Prob­lem Analy­sis (CA­PA) bu­reau, the Com­mis­sion­er ques­tioned, “Why doesn’t the pub­lic want to be­lieve that in 2026, we are on a down­ward tra­jec­to­ry?”

He rea­soned that hid­den agen­das had a role to play in this re­gard.

“I can posit that per­sons with per­son­al or oth­er agen­das in the so­cial me­dia, that want to keep a par­tic­u­lar nar­ra­tive alive.”

“Crime is high. The coun­try, Rome, is burn­ing. You must run for the hills, that sort of thing.”

He said PDOs al­so played a role in this de­cline.

“The in­tro­duc­tion of Pre­ven­tive De­ten­tion Or­ders was able to take per­sons who would nor­mal­ly be out in the pub­lic, com­mit­ting crimes, and place them be­hind bars.”

Re­fer­ring to this as “state-spon­sored ac­com­mo­da­tion” where these men and women were pro­vid­ed with three square meals per day, Gue­var­ro claimed, “We saw a com­men­su­rate drop in the homi­cide and se­ri­ous crime rates.”

He added, “A small num­ber of the pop­u­la­tion have crime high and have us liv­ing in fear.”

This, he said, had spurred the au­thor­i­ties even more to fo­cus on “Re­mov­ing them in a law­ful way, from in­con­ve­nienc­ing the fair-mind­ed cit­i­zens of T&T, and keep­ing them safe­ly tucked away where they can do no harm to the pub­lic.”

De­fend­ing the op­tics of SoE 1 and SoE 2, as well as the sta­tis­tics aris­ing out of both pe­ri­ods where the ma­jor­i­ty of de­tainees would have been re­leased with­out be­ing charged, Gue­var­ro said in­ves­ti­ga­tors were con­tin­u­ing to work on build­ing their cas­es as the ev­i­dence thresh­old had not been met up to the time of their re­lease.

In­sist­ing the TTPS was con­stant­ly rolling out new op­er­a­tional plans – some of which could not be made pub­lic – he as­sured their ef­forts were geared to­wards en­sur­ing that when the coun­try is no longer un­der an SoE, “We’re able to con­tin­ue to pro­vide that lev­el of safe­ty and se­cu­ri­ty to the mem­bers of the pub­lic.”

Rub­bish­ing claims that the SoEs were be­ing used as a crime-fight­ing tool, he ar­gued, “I want to as­sure the pub­lic that the TTPS has a strate­gic plan.”

He ad­mit­ted that the SoEs had pro­vid­ed law en­force­ment with ad­di­tion­al strate­gies, in­clud­ing

Pre­ven­tive De­ten­tion Or­ders (PDOs) and war­rant-less en­try, he said, “This has main­tained a par­tic­u­lar amount of con­trol over crime for the TTPS.”

Pressed to say how the TTPS in­tend­ed to pre­serve the gains they had so far se­cured, the CoP said this was where leg­isla­tive amend­ments came in­to play.

“We need to get changes done so as to give the po­lice a lit­tle more au­thor­i­ty to get things done,” he said.

Re­gard­ing the re­port­ed record-low lev­els of pub­lic trust and con­fi­dence in the TTPS and sev­er­al calls for him to step down, Gue­var­ro said this did not ac­cu­rate­ly re­flect the whole of so­ci­ety.

Rather, he said, “It re­flects the views of cer­tain per­sons in so­ci­ety who feel ag­griev­ed by cer­tain de­ci­sions.”

“No mat­ter what de­ci­sion I make sit­ting in this chair, I will not be able to please every­one.”

Aware that the over­whelm­ing call for his re­moval arose from the de­ci­sion he made not to im­me­di­ate­ly sus­pend the of­fi­cers in­volved in the Joshua Sama­roo/Ka­ia Sealy shoot­ing in Jan­u­ary, the Com­mis­sion­er again de­fend­ed his stance as he said, “The gen­er­al pub­lic did not have sight of the ev­i­dence that I had.”

“They didn’t know what I knew, and thus, I took a de­ci­sion to re­move the of­fi­cers from the front line.”

Aware that the pub­lic’s ire had been ig­nit­ed with the move to al­low the of­fi­cers to con­tin­ue work­ing as nor­mal, the CoP said ag­griev­ed per­sons had the op­tion to ex­er­cise their con­sti­tu­tion­al rights by protest­ing, as had been seen with the 19 Bul­lets, 19 Protests Cam­paign led by Alyssa Phillip.

“I had no prob­lem with them protest­ing. In fact, they protest­ed in front of the Red House on the first day. They protest­ed in front Po­lice Head­quar­ters the sec­ond day. They protest­ed in front sev­er­al po­lice sta­tions along the East-West Cor­ri­dor, and they did peace­ful­ly, but at some point in time, in­tel­li­gence sug­gest­ed to us that per­sons who were not like-mind­ed in terms of peace­ful protests, in­fil­trat­ed that lit­tle protest group and it be­came some­what ad­ver­sar­i­al to the pub­lic in­ter­est and thus, at the 16 to 17 protests, the po­lice had to act.”

Gue­var­ro sought to jus­ti­fy his ac­tions, ar­gu­ing, “We just can’t con­tin­ue look­ing at them car­ry­ing on and see­ing that it was go­ing on a par­tic­u­lar tra­jec­to­ry and not stop it, so we de­cid­ed to act, and I utilised the au­thor­i­ty giv­en to me un­der the var­i­ous leg­is­la­tion to have a le­gal no­tice placed so as to pro­tect par­tic­u­lar places in T&T from par­tic­u­lar ac­tions.”

De­clin­ing to dis­close what in­tel­li­gence had been gleaned to in­form this ac­tion, he con­tin­ued, “If you look at the par­tic­u­lar places, and I am one who will sup­port the per­son’s right to free­dom of ex­pres­sion and what we are say­ing is you can come and ex­press your­self freely, just do it with­in the lim­it.”

Gue­var­ro re­it­er­at­ed, “In terms of per­sons be­ing free to protest in T&T, that free­dom still ex­ists and it is not be­ing cur­tailed in any way what­so­ev­er, just do it with­in what the law rep­re­sents.”

To those ar­gu­ing that the TTPS was hid­ing be­hind the re­frain that “in­tel­li­gence-led polic­ing” was now be­ing trot­ted out as the de­fence for a lot of what was tak­ing place dur­ing the SoE, Gue­var­ro re­spond­ed, “It is un­for­tu­nate that the psy­che of the cit­i­zen­ry in this coun­try has be­come one that they tend to dis­be­lieve every­thing.”

The top cop re­mind­ed the pub­lic of the old say­ing, “be­lieve half of what you hear and none of what you see”, he claimed, “I can tell you from where I sit, that there are sev­er­al things that come to the at­ten­tion of not on­ly the CoP, but oth­er per­sons who are in re­ceipt of in­tel­li­gence da­ta such as the di­rec­tor of the SSA and the Chief of De­fense Staff...all these bits of in­for­ma­tion in­tel­li­gence comes to us and on a dai­ly ba­sis, we must now as­sess this in­for­ma­tion to see what is ver­i­fi­able and what is not ver­i­fi­able.”

With­out di­vulging the sen­si­tive in­ner work­ings of the na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty ap­pa­ra­tus, he moved to as­sure the pop­u­la­tion that all de­ci­sions were tak­en in their best in­ter­est as it per­tained to ex­ist­ing and po­ten­tial threats.

“I would urge the pub­lic to place the be­lief that we are do­ing so with your in­ter­est, to pro­tect you.”

As the leader of the TTPS, Geu­var­ro ex­plained, “It is for me to take de­ci­sions and op­er­ate in a par­tic­u­lar way with in­tegri­ty and every­thing else that comes with the of­fice, to en­sure that the per­cep­tion of the leader al­so fil­ters down to the gen­er­al mem­bers of the staff.”

“And how do we go about this? We try to root out the neg­a­tive el­e­ments with­in the so­ci­ety, and with­in the po­lice ser­vice it­self.”

Re­veal­ing there were cur­rent­ly 290 of­fi­cers on sus­pen­sion at the mo­ment, Gue­var­ro said this was trans­paren­cy and ac­count­abil­i­ty at work in that, “The po­lice ser­vice will in­ves­ti­gate, ar­rest, and charge our own.”

Cit­ing the Po­lice Com­plaints Au­thor­i­ty (PCA) as well as the Pro­fes­sion­al Stan­dards Bu­reau (PSB) as two over­sight bod­ies to deal with com­plaints of in­ter­nal dis­ci­pline, the Com­mis­sion­er said, “We have sys­tems that are work­ing to weed out the neg­a­tive el­e­ments.”

Pressed on the fact that po­lice killings are up, he re­peat­ed the call for peo­ple to lay down their guns.

“When my of­fi­cers are be­ing asked to re­spond, place them­selves in op­er­a­tional mode or height­ened op­er­a­tional mode, and I have to con­stant­ly come to the pub­lic and beg them and ask them, put down your firearms, call the po­lice, tell them where it is. It’s bet­ter to find the firearm than try to en­gage my of­fi­cers with the firearm. Yet still, per­sons find it very dif­fi­cult to do so.”

He added, “At the end of the day, I again will make a plea to the mem­bers of the pub­lic who are en­gaged or feel that this is the on­ly way that they can go through life with crim­i­nal­i­ty, turn your lives away from a life of crime. Give your life to Je­sus, Al­lah, Kr­ish­na. Get some re­li­gious teach­ings. Put them in­to your life.”