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Amid con­cerns that a po­ten­tial con­flict be­tween the Unit­ed States and Venezuela could spill over in­to Trinidad and To­ba­go, the Es­tate Po­lice As­so­ci­a­tion (EPA) has warned that its mem­bers are not ad­e­quate­ly equipped to pro­tect the coun­try’s crit­i­cal in­fra­struc­ture and high-risk as­sets.

EPA pres­i­dent Deryck Richard­son said the as­so­ci­a­tion has raised these con­cerns since 2018, but the is­sue has tak­en on greater ur­gency fol­low­ing re­cent threats from Venezuela. Es­tate con­sta­bles op­er­ate across both the pub­lic and pri­vate sec­tors, tasked with se­cur­ing key fa­cil­i­ties in­clud­ing TSTT, T&TEC, WASA, Pi­ar­co In­ter­na­tion­al Air­port, sea­ports, and Her­itage Pe­tro­le­um’s off­shore in­stal­la­tions.

Richard­son warned that in any hos­tile sce­nario, crit­i­cal in­fra­struc­ture would like­ly be­come an ear­ly tar­get.