Guevarro says TTPS overtime spend needed

Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice (CoP) Al­lis­ter Gue­var­ro is de­fend­ing near­ly $800 mil­lion in over­time pay­ments made by the Trinidad and To­ba­go Po­lice Ser­vice (TTPS) be­tween 2024 and 2026, ar­gu­ing that the ex­pen­di­ture was both nec­es­sary and jus­ti­fied in light of sig­nif­i­cant re­duc­tions in crime and is like­ly to con­tin­ue as the ser­vice con­tin­ues its fight against the crim­i­nal el­e­ment.

In a video state­ment re­leased yes­ter­day, Gue­var­ro said the drop in crim­i­nal ac­tiv­i­ty demon­strat­ed that of­fi­cers had been work­ing ef­fec­tive­ly de­spite on­go­ing man­pow­er chal­lenges.

“At present, the TTPS is op­er­at­ing with a 22 per cent short­age of of­fi­cers while main­tain­ing an op­er­a­tional tem­po that sta­tis­tics show has pushed crime back to lev­els not seen since 2007,” Gue­var­ro said.