Senior officers: Fewer than 200 body-cams working in TTPS

Eliz­a­beth Gon­za­les

Se­nior Re­porter

eliz­a­beth.gon­za­[email protected]

Less than five per cent of an es­ti­mat­ed 6,500 po­lice of­fi­cers in the TTPS use body cams while on du­ty, said Deputy Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice Ju­nior Ben­jamin.

In a sit-down in­ter­view with Guardian Me­dia last week, Ben­jamin re­vealed that the ser­vice has about 190 ac­tive body-worn cam­eras.

In a sub­se­quent in­ter­view, Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Al­lis­ter Gue­var­ro put that fig­ure at 180 that were “ac­tu­al­ly us­able.”

Dur­ing an in­ter­view on Fri­day, he said these had been dis­trib­uted to front-line of­fi­cers.

He said 1,000 body cam­eras, which were pur­chased pri­or to him be­com­ing com­mis­sion­er, had been “re­pur­posed” and were now be­ing used to train po­lice re­cruits at the Po­lice Train­ing Acad­e­my, St James.

Ben­jamin, though, could not pro­vide a full in­ven­to­ry to Guardian Me­dia but said the avail­abil­i­ty of body cams was small.

“I can tell you that what we have is a very small amount, and it cer­tain­ly is not suf­fi­cient for the po­lice ser­vice at all.

“The ser­vice, our po­si­tion is that we do sup­port the whole idea of body-worn cam­eras. It aids in at least three ar­eas, as far as we are con­cerned, in terms of help­ing and giv­ing ev­i­den­tial val­ue to things. It al­so aids in trans­paren­cy, which we think is num­ber one for the po­lice of­fi­cers, and al­so in pub­lic con­fi­dence. When the pub­lic sees you have that body-worn cam­era, it al­so in­creas­es the pub­lic’s con­fi­dence with the po­lice of­fi­cer. There­fore, we are in full sup­port of body-worn cam­eras. And as part of the tool of trade for po­lice of­fi­cers, we want to en­sure that we can out­fit, if pos­si­ble, all po­lice of­fi­cers with body-worn cam­eras,” he said.

The use of body-worn cam­eras has once again be­come a part of pub­lic dis­course fol­low­ing the po­lice-in­volved shoot­ing of 31-year-old Joshua Sama­roo and his com­mon-law wife in St Au­gus­tine on Jan­u­ary 20.

Even the Po­lice Com­plaints Au­thor­i­ty re­mind­ed of­fi­cers about the need to use the cam­eras.

As it stands, Ben­jamin said the pro­gramme’s pol­i­cy would need re­vi­sion when new cam­eras are pro­cured be­cause the frame­work was built around old­er de­vices.

He said the TTPS has not re­turned to ten­der be­cause the next pro­cure­ment must be bud­get­ed, and said the next at­tempt is be­ing lined up for fis­cal 2026–2027.

Last Sep­tem­ber, Alexan­der told the House that the 3,000 body-worn cam­era con­tract, award­ed in Au­gust 2024, was can­celled to save funds. The con­tract was worth $24.9 mil­lion.

At that time, Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice Al­lis­ter Gue­var­ro said he be­lieved the cam­eras could be bought for much less and claimed the quot­ed costs were in­flat­ed.

Mean­while, Op­po­si­tion MP Kei­th Scot­land, who was a min­is­ter in the Min­istry of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty in the for­mer gov­ern­ment, said he still sup­ports dis­ci­pli­nary ac­tion against of­fi­cers who refuse to com­ply with body-cam­era re­quire­ments.

As chair­man of the Joint Se­lect Com­mit­tee on Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty, Scot­land in Feb­ru­ary 2024 had called on for­mer po­lice com­mis­sion­er Er­la Hare­wood-Christo­pher to in­sti­tute dis­ci­pli­nary ac­tion against them—make an ex­am­ple, and peo­ple will fall in­to line.

In an in­ter­view last Thurs­day, Scot­land said, “I stand by that (state­ment)… Even more so now, I stand by that. It is even more crit­i­cal now.

“And it serves as a first line of pro­tec­tion against po­lice of­fi­cers from al­le­ga­tions, which may be un­true. The body cams will not lie.”

He ar­gued that de­part­men­tal or­ders are suf­fi­cient to man­date use and that con­se­quences al­ready ex­ist un­der com­mon law and the dis­ci­pli­nary regime.

“It’s a law­ful in­struc­tion, and the dis­obe­di­ence of a law­ful in­struc­tion will have con­se­quences un­der the com­mon law and its dis­ci­pli­nary con­se­quences.”

Po­lice So­cial and Wel­fare As­so­ci­a­tion pres­i­dent ASP Ish­mael Pitt said the as­so­ci­a­tion is not op­posed to body cam­eras but is con­cerned about lim­i­ta­tions. He re­ject­ed the claim that of­fi­cers are sim­ply re­fus­ing to com­ply.

“It is not a case of of­fi­cers just not us­ing the body cam­eras. Of­fi­cers do use the body cam­eras on a dai­ly ba­sis. It is not that of­fi­cers are just dis­re­gard­ing what is the pol­i­cy of the or­gan­i­sa­tion. I can tell you that body cam­eras are be­ing pro­vid­ed to what we would call front­line of­fi­cers.”

DCP Ben­jamin said the TTPS pol­i­cy po­si­tion is that cam­eras are sup­posed to be on when of­fi­cers are out­side on du­ty, but ear­li­er de­vices cre­at­ed op­er­a­tional com­pro­mis­es.

“Based on our pol­i­cy, it’s sup­posed to be, once you’re out­side on du­ty, you’re sup­posed to have it on. We had a sit­u­a­tion where we had two sets. One of these—the bat­tery was a prob­lem, so the bat­tery was dy­ing very quick­ly, so we tried to switch it on on­ly when you’re hav­ing the in­ter­ac­tion or the en­gage­ment. The sec­ond set, the bat­tery was not a prob­lem. How­ev­er, the chal­lenge was re­al­ly to get the clips, you know, that were suit­able.”

When ques­tioned, he could not re­call in­ter­nal in­ves­ti­ga­tions or dis­ci­pli­nary ac­tion tied to body-cam fail­ures.

He ar­gued that en­force­ment be­comes hard­er to sus­tain when the pro­gramme is not prop­er­ly re­sourced.

“The aim was to re­al­ly get it in­to the cul­ture of the po­lice. And as I said, even be­fore that time, these sit­u­a­tions right now have re­al­ly stunt­ed our abil­i­ty to con­tin­ue to pur­sue it be­cause we need to have a prop­er func­tion­al sys­tem so that it be­comes part of every­body’s DNA.”