KAY-MARIE FLETCH­ER

Se­nior Re­porter

kay-marie.fletch­er@guardian.co.tt

The Gov­ern­ment will be go­ing af­ter white-col­lar crim­i­nals and those who fa­cil­i­tate or­gan­ised crime.

That was the warn­ing from At­tor­ney Gen­er­al John Je­re­mie yes­ter­day, as he de­fend­ed the Gov­ern­ment’s pro­pos­al to ex­tend the State of Emer­gency (SoE) by three months.

Je­re­mie said law en­force­ment ef­forts can­not be lim­it­ed to blue-col­lar gang mem­bers alone, as au­thor­i­ties must al­so tar­get those who en­able and prof­it from crim­i­nal ac­tiv­i­ty.

Dur­ing the de­bate in Par­lia­ment last night, Je­re­mie said the Gov­ern­ment’s fo­cus will now ex­tend to gangs, in­clud­ing those who de­scribe them­selves in per­cent­ages, such as the “one per cent,” which has been used to re­fer to the Syr­i­an/Lebanese com­mu­ni­ty in T&T.

“An in­frac­tion of the law by the pow­er­ful and the one per cent is no dif­fer­ent from an in­frac­tion of the law by the poor lit­tle black youths in Mor­vant and Laven­tille. We are not here speak­ing to ac­tion tak­en by our al­lies in the north. We have no con­trol over that,” the AG said in ref­er­ence to cit­i­zens who had their visas re­voked by the US gov­ern­ment, some of whom he said had come to him seek­ing help to get the mat­ter rec­ti­fied.

“What we do have con­trol over, is what our law en­force­ment tells us about some of the ac­tiv­i­ties of these per­sons. The time when they re­ceived the keys to the city and li­cence to mash up the place. That time is over.”

He stressed that such pro­tec­tion no longer ex­ists for some peo­ple, as au­thor­i­ties would act against any­one found to be in­volved in il­le­gal ac­tiv­i­ty.

“To those per­sons among us who con­sid­er that their wealth al­lows them guar­an­tees from pros­e­cu­tion and from the at­ten­tion of law en­force­ment bod­ies, we say those days are be­hind us. If you be­have as gang mem­bers do, you shall be treat­ed in ex­act­ly the same way that blue-col­lar gang mem­bers are. If your des­ig­na­tion hap­pens to be with­in the one per cent, it hap­pens to be six, sev­en, or eight, Teteron (prison) awaits.”

Je­re­mie al­so said Gov­ern­ment is pre­pared to deal with the con­se­quences that fol­low.

He said, “If you tar­get me, as I ex­pect you will, or my Prime Min­is­ter, as you have, hid­ing be­hind the news­pa­pers you con­trol. If, as our in­tel­li­gence sug­gests, you have in con­tem­pla­tion more and di­rect ac­tion, the in­dig­ni­ty of the cells at Teteron (prison) awaits…

“What­ev­er my per­son­al con­se­quences, what­ev­er the con­se­quences are for the Prime Min­is­ter, I think it may be too much for them to chew all of us. We are pre­pared for that. The Gov­ern­ment will not be de­terred in its dri­ve against gang-re­lat­ed crime and gang-re­lat­ed ac­tiv­i­ty. Giv­en the gains that we have achieved with the State of Emer­gency, I seek the ex­ten­sion of the State of Emer­gency.”

De­fend­ing the Gov­ern­ment’s de­ci­sion to im­pose two SoEs since com­ing in­to of­fice in April 2025, Je­re­mie said in­for­ma­tion from the Trinidad and To­ba­go Po­lice Ser­vice’s (TTPS) Strate­gic An­a­lyt­ics and In­tel­li­gence De­part­ment showed that crime had sig­nif­i­cant­ly de­creased.

He al­so claimed gang struc­tures had been weak­ened as a re­sult of the emer­gency mea­sures im­posed. He said sta­tis­tics showed that nine out of 10 po­lice di­vi­sions record­ed re­duc­tions in se­ri­ous crime and over­all se­ri­ous crime was down by 20 per cent, when com­pared with the cor­re­spond­ing pe­ri­od last year.

He said homi­cides had al­so de­clined com­pared with the same pe­ri­od in 2025, which it­self record­ed the low­est mur­der rate in 20 years.

While ac­knowl­edg­ing that younger and less ex­pe­ri­enced in­di­vid­u­als were at­tempt­ing to as­sume lead­er­ship roles with­in crim­i­nal net­works, Je­re­mie said law en­force­ment agen­cies had an­tic­i­pat­ed that de­vel­op­ment and were equipped to re­spond.

De­fend­ing the first SoE, Je­re­mie said it curbed gang ac­tiv­i­ty.

“Now, his­to­ry will show in time, when it is writ­ten, that we made sig­nif­i­cant head­way in dis­rupt­ing the ac­tiv­i­ties of the gangs and curb­ing gang-re­lat­ed ac­tiv­i­ty, both of which were re­spon­si­ble for the very re­al threat to pub­lic or­der and to the cit­i­zens of this State.

“We on this side (Gov­ern­ment) have kept our promise. We de­clared a State of Emer­gency in Ju­ly of last year due to an im­pend­ing ex­is­ten­tial threat to the State, which was be­ing hatched and or­dered and arranged from with­in our prison sys­tem. We dealt with that threat with the full force of the law.”

He added, “We took the prob­lem pris­on­ers out of the Max­i­mum Se­cu­ri­ty Prison, where they knew that they were com­mu­ni­cat­ing freely with their ac­com­plices on the out­side. They had tele­vi­sions. They had tele­phones. They had oth­er means of com­mu­ni­cat­ing di­rect­ly, call­ing hits on per­sons who they didn’t like. We dealt with that. We put them in Teteron (prison). We put lay­ers of se­cu­ri­ty around them, prison of­fi­cers, po­lice of­fi­cers, mem­bers of the De­fence Force. And we said, ‘You stay there and shut up’. And that’s what they did.”

When it comes to the cur­rent SoE trig­gered by ram­pant gang vi­o­lence, he said the Gov­ern­ment will not al­low gangs to run amok in this coun­try.

“They (crim­i­nal gangs) will not be per­mit­ted to op­er­ate as if they are above the law. They will not be per­mit­ted to brazen­ly com­mit the kinds of hor­rif­ic acts we wit­nessed in the ear­ly months of the year 2025… It is an in­dis­putable fact that as a re­sult of ac­tions tak­en by the State, in­clud­ing the time­ly de­c­la­ra­tions of States of Emer­gency, tar­get­ed ac­tion tak­en by law en­force­ment and our in­tel­li­gence ser­vices, along with var­i­ous oth­er ef­fec­tive mea­sures that make up our crime strat­e­gy, se­ri­ous crime across Trinidad and To­ba­go has plum­met­ed.”

The de­bate on the ex­ten­sion of the SoE con­tin­ued late in­to the night.