Jensen La Vende

Se­nior Re­porter

jensen.lavende@guardian.co.tt

Fif­teen days in­to the State of Emer­gency (SoE), the po­lice say they have made sig­nif­i­cant in­roads in­to ad­dress­ing gang vi­o­lence, al­though more can be done.

Ad­dress­ing the suc­cess of po­lice op­er­a­tions in curb­ing gang vi­o­lence since the start of the SoE on De­cem­ber 30, Deputy Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice (Op­er­a­tions) Ju­nior Ben­jamin said, “What led to it (SoE) was the in­creased num­ber of vi­o­lent of­fences com­mit­ted. And clear­ly, what we’re see­ing now is that there is a tremen­dous de­crease, so it means that our strate­gies are work­ing. And then we still think that it prob­a­bly might be a bit ear­ly in the game. But it means that we are cer­tain­ly on the right road to­wards get­ting the ef­fect and the im­pact that we want.”

At a me­dia con­fer­ence on De­cem­ber 30, then act­ing at­tor­ney gen­er­al Stu­art Young said po­lice had in­formed the Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Coun­cil of a threat of in­creased gang vi­o­lence via the use of high-pow­ered weapons. This fol­lowed the mur­ders of six men in two sep­a­rate shoot­ings a day apart.

Ben­jamin said the mur­der toll went from 23 last year to 12 up to yes­ter­day. Sex­u­al of­fences al­so saw a dras­tic drop from 33 last year to sev­en to date. He said wound­ings and shoot­ings and oth­er se­ri­ous crimes were al­so re­duced.

Last Fri­day, Ben­jamin said over 30 guns had been seized and over 500 ar­rests had been made since the SoE be­gan.

Yes­ter­day, he said, “We are not say­ing that we are sat­is­fied. We con­tin­ue to press and re­main fo­cused but it is quite clear that the SoE is mak­ing some sig­nif­i­cant in­roads in­to the crime sit­u­a­tion and cre­at­ing a space for a greater lev­el of safe­ty and se­cu­ri­ty.”

Mean­while, for the third time since the SoE was de­clared, the Max­i­mum Se­cu­ri­ty Prison, Arou­ca, was searched and some 40 cell­phones were seized.

Prison raids net 80 il­le­gal cell­phones

Act­ing Prison Com­mis­sion­er Car­los Cor­raspe yes­ter­day said the search done on Sun­day, af­ter a prison of­fi­cer was held at­tempt­ing to smug­gle mar­i­jua­na and a cell­phone in­to the prison in a box of Chi­nese food.

He said with prison fa­cil­i­ties be­ing de­clared de­ten­tion cen­tres, the search­es were in place to sani­tise the fa­cil­i­ties in prepa­ra­tion for de­tainees.

“So, of course, you want to have sani­tised pris­ons, be­cause you do not want a sit­u­a­tion where per­sons who are de­tained are then able to ac­cess pro­hib­it­ed and unau­tho­rised items. The search­es are part of a big­ger strat­e­gy, which is to en­sure the pris­ons are sani­tised, so that when per­sons are de­tained and start to en­ter the fa­cil­i­ty, they will not have ac­cess to these items as well,” Cor­raspe said.

Sun­day’s search means that at least 80 cell­phones have been seized at the prison with­in two weeks.

Cor­raspe said the ma­jor­i­ty of his of­fi­cers are hon­est and hard-work­ing and blamed the use of drones for the cell­phones and oth­er con­tra­band en­ter­ing the prison.

Guardian Me­dia was in­formed that a spe­cial po­lice unit, spear­head­ed by DCP Suzette Mar­tin, is in­ves­ti­gat­ing crim­i­nal col­lu­sion be­tween in­mates and prison of­fi­cers. Cor­raspe said he was un­aware of the spe­cial unit but said his of­fi­cers and po­lice have been work­ing to­geth­er to rid the pris­ons of con­tra­band. He said the search­es show how the pris­ons have been com­pro­mised and con­grat­u­lat­ed his of­fi­cers for their dili­gence in cor­rect­ing the said com­pro­mise.

“The abil­i­ty to have cell­phones com­plete­ly com­pro­mis­es the con­cept of in­car­cer­a­tion and in­ca­pac­i­ta­tion, be­cause the rea­son per­sons are sent to prison by the ju­di­cia­ry is on the ba­sis that these per­sons could then harm and hurt and they are at a cer­tain lev­el of risk that they ought not to be in the gen­er­al com­mu­ni­ty. When some­one is able to be in a prison with a cell­phone that can be used to cause harm and hurt to the pub­lic, and to wit­ness­es, you could well see the dan­ger that por­tends for pub­lic safe­ty. And even in the con­text of our ju­di­cial sys­tem, it means that the pur­pose of in­car­cer­a­tion be­comes com­pro­mised.”