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THE current situation with the Police Administration Building, Sackville Street, Port of Spain, may come as a shock to many, but to Police Commissioner Allister Guevarro, it has been an issue that has been persisting for some time.
The commissioner, a day after electrical issues triggered the fire alarms at the building causing flooding that destroyed significant files, took to a voice note on August 19 to say that the police administration building has long been plagued with electrical issues.
“It is not a modern facility,” he said. “We are operating with one elevator. The central air conditioning system does not function in most areas and something as simple as the staff using the microwave during lunch breaks causes low-voltage problems.”
On August 18, police in a media release said a rupture in the fire suppression system on the sixth floor of the building led to several important documents – human resource documents, internal memos, administrative files and firearm users’ licences (FULs) being damaged.
In Guevarro’s voice note, he assured that the majority of FUL files were not damaged.
“Let me be absolutely clear because I have heard the comments and conspiracy theories on social media – the 55,000-plus firearm files are safe and are unaffected.
“They are securely housed at the firearms permit unit. The only files – and I will stress – the only firearm files that were affected were those brought to my office for weekly adjudication.
“So there is no need for panic. Your applications are safe.”
Gary Griffith: Police administration building overburdened
Former commissioner of police Gary Griffith told Newsday during a cellphone call that while people may think the Police Administration Building is the TTPS’ headquarters, it is actually simply an administrative building that was retrofitted to accommodate police after the 1990 attempted coup.
He said it was likely that the building has become overburdened from trying to deal with administration and operations at the same time.
“For about 35 years, the TT Police Service did not have a headquarters. People believe that the Admin Building was the headquarters. That is not a police headquarters, that is an administrative building. So in other words, the commissioner of police is not supposed to be there.”
He compared the administration building to the police headquarters in New York – One Police Plaza in Manhattan – that has several major divisions in the police service under that one roof.
[caption id="attachment_1173116" align="alignnone" width="823"] Commissioner of Police Allister Guevarro. -  Photo by Angelo Marcelle[/caption]
“Right now, we spend millions of dollars per month with police operational teams all over the country in different buildings where rent is being paid.
“You have the Special Branch in one building where we spend over $.5 million a month, the GEB (Guard and Emergency Branch) in another building, you have the SIU (Special Investigation Unit) in another building, you have another step down in Ridgewood Plaza.
“With that, it means instead of all of these units, similar to One Police Plaza with NYPD, where all of these different intelligence agencies and units are under one building and one umbrella to ensure that they can have immediate communication, coordination, sharing of information, sharing of documents, we don't have that.
“The Admin Building has become a hub to be used with administration and for operations, which is unacceptable.”
He noted that he made a recommendation to the previous government while he was commissioner, to begin the process to rebuild the police headquarters and it was approved in a cabinet note but work on the building never commenced.
“There was an initial cabinet note that gave the approval for initial due diligence to start,” he said. “We did the draft which had an operational command centre, a place where all the CCTV footage could be viewed and so on. That cannot be done in an administrative building.”
“The building has been totally overburdened to the point that it could become a fire hazard,” he said.
MP for Port of Spain South Stuart Young, who was national security minister at the time confirmed that the government did discuss the construction of a new headquarters for the police at the eastern entrance of Port of Spain, opposite the Central Market.
He said a centralised police administration building would not only improve operational capacity, but save millions in rent.
Too many police stations?
Griffith also noted that, in general, the police service does not need that many police stations.
“When you go to Miami, how many police stations do you see? But here you can leave from Maraval Police Station and in five minutes you will find St Clair Police Station. In two minutes after that you will find the police barracks. In a minute after that you will find St James station. In four minutes you can reach the four Roads Police Station. In three minutes you will find Diamond Vale station.
“If you go in the other direction you can get about four or five other stations in Port of Spain. So you are talking about 25-odd stations in a radius of a couple miles. That is madness!”
During his tenure as commissioner of police Griffith called for a reduction in the number of police stations. During a town hall meeting in 2019 he said he planned to reduce the number of stations from 77 (at that time) to 30.
But, he said, he was pressured by politicians to build more stations.
“They insisted that more stations must be built, because the more stations built the more they think they could get more work and the more things you could get a kick-back and profit from.”
Referring again to New York he said the NYPD has 55,000 police officers to secure eight million people, but still has less police stations than TT which has 7,000 police officers to secure 1.4 million people.
“It means that we do not need to increase the quantity but we need to enhance the quality,” he said. “And that is where things such as online reporting come in.”
He said during his tenure as commissioner he set up an online reporting platform that would streamline reports and allow officers to respond faster. But, he said it was dismantled by subsequent commissioners.
Opposition: Police Admin condition ‘unacceptable’
Members of the opposition have taken the government to task over the condition of the building, saying that the government has the responsibility to support the police.
“The government has the responsibility to immediately provide the Commissioner of Police with the necessary financial resources to fix all of the issues at the police admin building as a matter of urgency,” said MP for Port of Spain South Stuart Young.
“It is unacceptable that the police headquarters would be subject to the conditions that we are now hearing of. I look forward to confirmation that resources will be urgently provided to the commissioner to rectify the situation.”
Arouca/Lopinot MP Marvin Gonzales knocked the filing processes, specifically for FULs.
“It is unfortunate that the application is still heavily paper-based, to the point that a rupture in a waterline can easily destroy important records.
“Had the records been digitised across the board in a timely basis, this embarrassment could have been easily avoided.”
 
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