Jensen La Vende

Se­nior Re­porter

jensen.lavende@guardian.com

Four weeks af­ter the State of Emer­gency (SoE) was de­clared, 97 peo­ple have been ar­rest­ed in con­nec­tion with gang ac­tiv­i­ties.

Dur­ing a me­dia brief­ing at the Po­lice Ad­min­is­tra­tion Build­ing, Port-of-Spain, yes­ter­day, TTPS le­gal of­fi­cer Sgt Ver­son Jeanville said the po­lice have iden­ti­fied three ma­jor gangs with sev­er­al af­fil­i­at­ed small­er gangs and are work­ing to se­cure charges against those en­gaged in gang ac­tiv­i­ty.

Deputy Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice in charge of op­er­a­tions Ju­nior Ben­jamin told Guardian Me­dia in a fol­low-up in­ter­view that since the SoE be­gan, 1,142 peo­ple have been ar­rest­ed, of which 97 were for sus­pect­ed gang ac­tiv­i­ties. The oth­ers in­clud­ed pos­ses­sion of guns, drugs and oth­er of­fences.

He added that po­lice had con­duct­ed 1,455 op­er­a­tions since the SoE be­gan on De­cem­ber 30, 2024, tar­get­ing 1,316 peo­ple and con­duct­ed 8,706 search­es. Up to yes­ter­day, po­lice seized had 50 guns, 1,270 as­sort­ed am­mu­ni­tion, 155 kilo­grammes of mar­i­jua­na, 749 grammes of co­caine and con­duct­ed 1,308 traf­fic op­er­a­tions, and de­tect­ed 3,915 traf­fic of­fences.

Speak­ing dur­ing a To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly Ple­nary sit­ting on Thurs­day, Chief Sec­re­tary Far­ley Au­gus­tine raised alarm over the in­creas­ing pres­ence of gangs in To­ba­go.

Read­ing from a US­AID re­port, Au­gus­tine said from three gangs in 2009, the is­land now has 28, which is even high­er than Port-of-Spain and oth­er di­vi­sions in Trinidad.

While Jeanville as­sured that the Po­lice Ser­vice is ac­tive­ly pur­su­ing gangs and gang­sters, he chose not to iden­ti­fy the names of the gangs - both the ma­jor and mi­nor gangs, the num­ber of gang­sters and whether the po­lice are seek­ing to ex­tra­dite gang­sters who re­port­ed­ly fled to the Unit­ed King­dom.

“What I would say is that the TTPS re­mains in con­tact with our in­ter­na­tion­al part­ners, and we con­tin­ue to co­or­di­nate very close­ly with them on this is­sue and sys­tems are in place to treat with the is­sue of per­sons who may have left the coun­try, who may be seek­ing to re­turn.”

The SoE was called specif­i­cal­ly to ad­dress gang ac­tiv­i­ties. Lead­ing up to the De­cem­ber 30 de­c­la­ra­tion, po­lice had in­formed the Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Coun­cil that fol­low­ing the at­tempt on the life of one al­leged gang leader, which lat­er saw six men mur­dered in two sep­a­rate in­ci­dents, there were con­cerns about in­creased vi­o­lent gang ac­tiv­i­ties.

Two men have been de­tained at the East­ern Cor­rec­tion­al and Re­ha­bil­i­ta­tion Cen­tre for sus­pect­ed gang ac­tiv­i­ty af­ter the Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter signed de­ten­tion or­ders un­der the SoE.

Jeanville said po­lice are cur­rent­ly com­pil­ing in­for­ma­tion to take to the Di­rec­tor of Pub­lic Pros­e­cu­tions, in the hope of se­cur­ing charges against sev­er­al al­leged gang­sters. Asked how many files are be­ing re­viewed and the num­ber of gang­sters to be af­fect­ed, Jeanville was tight-lipped.

“I wouldn’t want to give you a spe­cif­ic num­ber, but I can as­sure you that sev­er­al files have in fact been sub­mit­ted in re­la­tion to the crim­i­nal gang-re­lat­ed ac­tiv­i­ties of these per­sons. Those files are be­ing re­viewed for ev­i­den­tial suf­fi­cien­cy to en­sure that it meets the re­quire­ments of the leg­is­la­tion. Very soon, we hope to ap­proach the Of­fice of the Di­rec­tor of Pub­lic Pros­e­cu­tions con­cern­ing those in­ves­ti­ga­tions.”