Women and teenagers are among 50 peo­ple ar­rest­ed in To­ba­go dur­ing the State of Emer­gency (SoE) op­er­a­tions since it be­gan on De­cem­ber 30. 

Po­lice said the ar­rests in­clud­ed four women and two teens among in­di­vid­u­als aged 17 to 40, with one ex­cep­tion be­ing a 56-year-old man.

Of­fi­cers said yes­ter­day the of­fences range from pos­ses­sion of firearms and am­mu­ni­tion to mar­i­jua­na traf­fick­ing, rob­bery, house­break­ing, cul­ti­vat­ing mar­i­jua­na, and wound­ing.

Mean­while, To­ba­go Cham­ber of In­dus­try and Com­merce To­ba­go Di­vi­sion chair­man Cur­tis Williams said his mem­bers ex­pect noth­ing but re­sults at the end of the ex­tend­ed mea­sures.

“Af­ter the SoE, we hop­ing that the crime lev­els main­tain pret­ty low or ze­ro in To­ba­go go­ing for­ward. Those are some of the ex­pec­ta­tions we have for To­ba­go. We want to see the gang-re­lat­ed of­fences and crime be­ing re­duced, all those dri­ve-by and oth­er events.”

He said while busi­ness­es are see­ing a de­cline in rob­beries and break-ins, this had been not­ed as ear­ly as last Oc­to­ber. 

Williams said the SoE has am­pli­fied the po­lice’s ef­forts.

“We at the To­ba­go Di­vi­sion have played our part. We are now call­ing for the po­lice, church­es, com­mu­ni­ty and oth­er in­sti­tu­tions to play their part. We can’t en­tire­ly de­pend on the SoE. We need to put in some work. Solv­ing and deal­ing with crime is a holis­tic ap­proach and not on one im­per­son­at­ing or in­sti­tu­tion.”

For 2025, To­ba­go has had one mur­der. For the same pe­ri­od last year, the is­land had record­ed two.

—Eliz­a­beth Gon­za­les