A man de­scribed by po­lice as a high-rank­ing gang mem­ber in To­ba­go is among 84 peo­ple held by po­lice as part of on­go­ing an­ti-crime op­er­a­tions un­der the State of Emer­gency (SoE).

Of­fi­cers in the To­ba­go Di­vi­sion said the gang mem­ber was a key fig­ure in the To­ba­go fac­tion of the Ras­ta City or Sev­en gang.

He has been ac­cused of traf­fick­ing nar­cotics and ac­quir­ing high-pow­ered firearms to car­ry out vi­o­lent crimes, in­clud­ing mur­der on the is­land.

To­ba­go po­lice of­fi­cers have car­ried out 190 op­er­a­tions since the SoE was de­clared on De­cem­ber 30, 2024.

Se­nior of­fi­cers said 235 pri­or­i­ty of­fend­ers have been tar­get­ed in the 52 days of the SoE and 258 search­es have been con­duct­ed.

Of­fi­cers al­so ex­e­cut­ed 71 traf­fic op­er­a­tions, un­cov­er­ing 272 traf­fic of­fences.

Dur­ing the crack­down, po­lice said they re­cov­ered four pis­tols, which they said have con­tributed to ef­forts to curb gun-re­lat­ed crime on the is­land.

As of Feb­ru­ary 18, To­ba­go record­ed two mur­ders.

By the first week in Feb­ru­ary, both mur­ders had been solved and the sus­pects, which in­clud­ed two mi­nors, had been charged and ap­peared in court.

For the same pe­ri­od last year, To­ba­go record­ed four mur­ders.

Ear­li­er this year, To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly Chief Sec­re­tary Far­ley Au­gus­tine re­vealed the is­land had at least 28 crim­i­nal gangs in op­er­a­tion and called for To­ba­go’s law en­force­ment agen­cies to re­ceive the nec­es­sary re­sources to fight crime.