CoP’s arming of off-duty officers gets full support

Chester Sam­bra­no

Lead Ed­i­tor—News­gath­er­ing

The Trinidad and To­ba­go Po­lice Ser­vice So­cial and Wel­fare As­so­ci­a­tion (TTPSS­WA) has thrown its full sup­port be­hind the move by the Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice Al­lis­ter Gue­var­ro to arm se­lect off-du­ty po­lice of­fi­cers 24 hours a day.

TTPSS­WA pres­i­dent, Asst Supt Gideon Dick­son, ful­ly backed the move yes­ter­day, a day af­ter Gue­var­ro an­nounced it dur­ing an ap­pear­ance on the TTPS’ flag­ship tele­vi­sion pro­gramme Be­yond the Tape.

In un­veil­ing the plan, Gue­var­ro said, “It is my in­ten­tion to in­sti­tute an off-du­ty firearm pol­i­cy where I will be arm­ing all of my front­line, tac­ti­cal and op­er­a­tional of­fi­cers.

“So that in the past, even af­ter they treat with a crim­i­nal, they would have had to sign off their weapons... well let me tell you, my of­fi­cers will not have to sign off their guns again.”

Dick­son yes­ter­day wel­comed the de­ci­sion, de­scrib­ing it as con­sis­tent with in­ter­na­tion­al best prac­tice.

“Of­fi­cers who en­gage in high-risk op­er­a­tions and in­ter­act with the crim­i­nal el­e­ment more fre­quent­ly than oth­ers must be al­lowed to car­ry their firearms at all times,” he said.

“It is best prac­tice world­wide for of­fi­cers like those to be armed 24 hours a day be­cause you per­form the test 24 hours a day.”

He out­right­ly re­ject­ed the no­tion that of­fi­cers should dis­arm once their shifts end.

“You want them to be up­front and per­son­al when they’re work­ing, and then when they leave du­ty, you want them to dis­arm? No, no, no. We sup­port—I ful­ly sup­port that ini­tia­tive.”

Dick­son al­so praised Com­mis­sion­er Gue­var­ro for his ear­ly lead­er­ship and com­mit­ment to em­pow­er­ing of­fi­cers.

“The com­mis­sion­er has start­ed ex­cel­lent­ly. Most of his pub­lic pro­nounce­ments are on point. He speaks di­rect­ly to mo­ti­vat­ing and sup­port­ing our hu­man re­source, and once that oc­curs, it sig­ni­fies that the group of per­sons you’re charged with lead­ing feel sup­port­ed,” Dick­son said.

He said when of­fi­cers feel that kind of back­ing from their leader, they nat­u­ral­ly go the ex­tra mile to safe­guard com­mu­ni­ties.

He al­so wel­comed the ex­pect­ed ar­rival of new bul­let­proof vests by next month, de­scrib­ing it as a ma­jor morale boost.

“We just want to com­mend pub­licly the ef­forts of the com­mis­sion­er to do it,” he said.

Prison Of­fi­cers As­so­ci­a­tion pres­i­dent Ger­ard Gor­don al­so backed the CoP’s ini­tia­tive.

“We are in to­tal, to­tal, to­tal sup­port of the ini­tia­tive of the Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice,” Gor­don told Guardian Me­dia.

“It has been some­thing that we have been ask­ing for for a while, and we look at it as a step in the right di­rec­tion.”

Gor­don said he hopes the move will al­so be ex­tend­ed to prison of­fi­cers, not­ing the im­por­tance of both ac­cess to ser­vice firearms while on du­ty and the abil­i­ty to se­cure­ly re­tain them off du­ty when nec­es­sary.

“We have to pro­tect the pro­tec­tors,” he said.

“We are al­so look­ing for­ward to some pos­i­tive move­ments in­volv­ing prison of­fi­cers as well—some­thing that I be­lieve will be done.”

Dur­ing the same broad­cast, Gue­var­ro al­so an­nounced that the TTPS will be­gin re­view­ing Firearm Users Li­cence (FUL) ap­pli­ca­tions sub­mit­ted in 2025 that are not old­er than six months.

“I can’t be arm­ing the mem­bers of the pub­lic and not be treat­ing with my own of­fi­cers,” he said. “You have not been left be­hind.”