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Last week, the Sun­day Guardian re­port­ed that be­tween 2014 and 2023, the Trinidad and To­ba­go Po­lice Ser­vice (TTPS) re­ceived up­wards of $25.5 bil­lion from the State.

Of course, not all the fund­ing re­ceived went di­rect­ly to crime de­tec­tion and pre­ven­tion, with a sig­nif­i­cant amount go­ing to salaries and up­keep, but treat­ing crime is ul­ti­mate­ly the ser­vice’s man­date.

Ac­cord­ing to Fi­nance Min­istry doc­u­ments, $21.9 bil­lion—86 per­cent—was spent by the TTPS on re­cur­rent ex­pen­di­ture alone, with the re­main­ing $3.6 bil­lion spent on de­vel­op­ment pro­grammes. In its con­tin­ued ex­am­i­na­tion of ex­pens­es and val­ue for mon­ey by the TTPS, this week, the Guardian Me­dia In­ves­ti­ga­tions Desk looks at the cost and main­te­nance of po­lice ve­hi­cles.