COPS RACK UP $800M IN OVERTIME

Akash Sama­roo

Lead Ed­i­tor-Pol­i­tics

akash.sama­[email protected]

The Trinidad and To­ba­go Po­lice Ser­vice (TTPS) has paid out near­ly $800 mil­lion in over­time in just two years and eight months, with ex­pen­di­ture for the first eight months of 2026 al­ready sur­pass­ing the en­tire bill for 2025, even as the coun­try pre­pares for an­oth­er round of height­ened polic­ing un­der the new Spe­cial Op­er­a­tions leg­is­la­tion.

Of­fi­cial fig­ures ob­tained through a Free­dom of In­for­ma­tion (FOI) ap­pli­ca­tion re­veal that the TTPS paid $793,893,264.65 in over­time be­tween Jan­u­ary 2024 and Au­gust 2026. Of that amount, $283,187,439.36 was paid be­tween Jan­u­ary and Au­gust this year, ex­ceed­ing the $276,838,626.07 spent through­out 2025 by $6,348,813.29 with four months still re­main­ing in the year.

The fig­ures come against the back­drop of two re­cent States of Emer­gency (SoEs) which cov­ered much of 2025 and 2026, dur­ing which time po­lice of­fi­cers un­der­took height­ened se­cu­ri­ty op­er­a­tions, in­clud­ing in­creased pa­trols, road­blocks and oth­er de­ploy­ments.

How­ev­er, the records do not iden­ti­fy how much over­time ex­pen­di­ture was di­rect­ly at­trib­ut­able to the SoEs.

With the Spe­cial Op­er­a­tions leg­is­la­tion now law and ad­di­tion­al polic­ing mea­sures ex­pect­ed to be im­ple­ment­ed, ques­tions are now emerg­ing about whether the over­time bill could climb even high­er.

The fig­ures were dis­closed in a sev­en-page re­sponse from the TTPS Of­fice of the Head of Le­gal Ser­vices, dat­ed Sep­tem­ber 29, 2026.

The in­for­ma­tion was pro­vid­ed fol­low­ing an FOI ap­pli­ca­tion filed by at­tor­ney Keron Ramkhal­whan, of Ju­ris X Cham­bers, on be­half of cit­i­zen Vishal Per­sad.

The ap­pli­ca­tion, dat­ed Au­gust 20, re­quest­ed the to­tal over­time pay­ments made to po­lice of­fi­cers be­tween Jan­u­ary 2024 and Au­gust 2026, along with a break­down by po­lice unit and di­vi­sion.

In its re­sponse, the TTPS con­firmed that both re­quests were ap­proved and that the in­for­ma­tion had been com­piled by its Fi­nance Branch.

The records re­veal a sig­nif­i­cant ac­cel­er­a­tion in over­time spend­ing. In 2024, the TTPS paid $233,867,199.22 in over­time. That in­creased by ap­prox­i­mate­ly $42.97 mil­lion, or 18.4 per cent, to $276,838,626.07 in 2025.

How­ev­er, the first eight months of 2026 have al­ready eclipsed both an­nu­al to­tals. The av­er­age month­ly over­time bill so far this year stands at ap­prox­i­mate­ly $35.4 mil­lion, com­pared with $23.07 mil­lion in 2025 and $19.49 mil­lion in 2024. That rep­re­sents an in­crease of ap­prox­i­mate­ly 53 per cent in av­er­age month­ly pay­ments com­pared with last year.

A break­down by po­lice unit and di­vi­sion re­veals that the Guard and Emer­gency Branch con­sis­tent­ly ac­count­ed for the largest net over­time pay­ments.

In 2024, the GEB record­ed ap­prox­i­mate­ly $29.66 mil­lion, fol­lowed by the IATF with $25.21 mil­lion, South­ern Di­vi­sion with $23.93 mil­lion and North­ern Di­vi­sion with $20.71 mil­lion.

The GEB again led in 2025 with $29.97 mil­lion, fol­lowed by the IATF with $26.97 mil­lion and South­ern Di­vi­sion with $26.82 mil­lion.

For the first eight months of 2026, the GEB record­ed $19.10 mil­lion, fol­lowed by South­ern Di­vi­sion with $16.99 mil­lion, North­ern Di­vi­sion with $16.50 mil­lion and the IATF with $15.88 mil­lion.

Across the three re­port­ing pe­ri­ods, the GEB ac­count­ed for ap­prox­i­mate­ly $78.7 mil­lion in net over­time pay­ments, while the IATF record­ed ap­prox­i­mate­ly $68.1 mil­lion.

How­ev­er, the di­vi­sion­al fi­nan­cial ta­bles re­port net pay­ments af­ter de­duc­tions, while the month­ly over­time ta­bles con­tain dif­fer­ent to­tals. The two sets of fig­ures can­not be di­rect­ly rec­on­ciled with­out fur­ther clar­i­fi­ca­tion from the TTPS.

Deputy Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice (Ad­min­is­tra­tion) Ju­nior Ben­jamin is, how­ev­er, de­fend­ing the over­time bill, ar­gu­ing that the ex­pen­di­ture must be weighed against the re­sults de­liv­ered by the TTPS, par­tic­u­lar­ly its ef­forts to re­duce mur­ders.

Speak­ing to Guardian Me­dia yes­ter­day, Ben­jamin in­sist­ed that main­tain­ing po­lice vis­i­bil­i­ty and de­ploy­ing of­fi­cers to com­bat crime came at a cost.

“There’s a price to be paid and there­fore, the over­time is but, I think, a small, a small price to pay to en­sure at the end of the day that we’ve seen such a great re­duc­tion,” Ben­jamin said.

He point­ed to what he de­scribed as im­prove­ments in the coun­try’s mur­der fig­ures, ar­gu­ing that sus­tained po­lice de­ploy­ments, in­clud­ing those in­volv­ing the In­ter-Agency Task Force and of­fi­cers in To­ba­go, had con­tributed to the re­sults.

Ben­jamin said the pub­lic should con­sid­er what the TTPS had ac­com­plished through its op­er­a­tions rather than fo­cus­ing sole­ly on the fi­nan­cial cost.

How­ev­er, he ac­knowl­edged that the two re­cent States of Emer­gency had sig­nif­i­cant­ly con­tributed to the ris­ing over­time ex­pen­di­ture.

Asked how much of the $793.9 mil­lion could be at­trib­uted to the height­ened polic­ing op­er­a­tions dur­ing the SoEs, Ben­jamin said he could not pro­vide a pre­cise fig­ure.

“I can’t re­al­ly say how much of it. I can say def­i­nite­ly it con­tributed a great deal to it.”

De­spite de­fend­ing the spend­ing, Ben­jamin re­vealed that he has been giv­en a man­date by the Po­lice Ser­vice Com­mis­sion to re­duce over­time ex­pen­di­ture by ten per cent. He ex­plained that in­struc­tions had al­ready been is­sued to strength­en the au­tho­ri­sa­tion and mon­i­tor­ing of over­time pay­ments, in­clud­ing clos­er scruti­ny of the hours of­fi­cers worked.

Ben­jamin said un­usu­al claims would be flagged and in­ves­ti­gat­ed to en­sure there was no im­pro­pri­ety.

He al­so iden­ti­fied staffing short­ages as a ma­jor fac­tor be­hind the re­liance on over­time, es­ti­mat­ing that the TTPS was more than 1,000 of­fi­cers short of its pre­vi­ous­ly au­tho­rised strength.

He said the ser­vice was work­ing to re­cruit and train at least 1,000 ad­di­tion­al of­fi­cers with­in the next year, ex­plain­ing that re­cent re­cruit­ment had large­ly been off­set by of­fi­cers leav­ing the or­gan­i­sa­tion.

“What we are turn­ing out is just enough for those who are al­so leav­ing,” he said.

His com­ments come as the Gov­ern­ment pur­sues a five-year re­cruit­ment pro­gramme an­nounced by Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Roger Alexan­der in May, aimed at in­creas­ing the TTPS es­tab­lish­ment from 7,884 to 10,200 of­fi­cers, with 2,316 ad­di­tion­al po­si­tions.

Asked whether the im­ple­men­ta­tion of the new Spe­cial Op­er­a­tions leg­is­la­tion could dri­ve over­time spend­ing even high­er, Ben­jamin said the TTPS in­tend­ed to draw on ad­di­tion­al re­sources to min­imise the bur­den on its ex­ist­ing of­fi­cers go­ing for­ward un­der the new leg­is­la­tion.

He said spe­cial re­serve po­lice of­fi­cers and mem­bers of the De­fence Force would as­sist with the op­er­a­tions, re­duc­ing the need for reg­u­lar po­lice of­fi­cers to shoul­der the en­tire work­load.

“It is not that the po­lice are go­ing to be do­ing it all by them­selves,” he said, adding that the arrange­ments would help the TTPS main­tain its op­er­a­tional com­mit­ments with­out plac­ing ex­ces­sive pres­sure on per­son­nel.

Ben­jamin al­so praised Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice Al­lis­ter Gue­var­ro, say­ing he de­served recog­ni­tion for the crime-fight­ing strate­gies be­ing im­ple­ment­ed by the TTPS.