Shane Su­perville

Se­nior Re­porter

shane.su­perville@guardian.co.tt

A man de­scribed by po­lice as a “pri­or­i­ty of­fend­er” and un­der­world fig­ure has been de­tained at the East­ern Cor­rec­tion­al and Re­ha­bil­i­ta­tion Cen­tre (ECRC) in San­ta Rosa, as po­lice from var­i­ous units be­gin a se­ries of in­quiries in­to his pur­port­ed ac­tiv­i­ties dur­ing the on­go­ing State of Emer­gency (SoE).

A le­gal no­tice pub­lished in the T&T Gazette yes­ter­day, re­vealed that Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Fitzger­ald Hinds had or­dered that Calvin Lee, whose alias is Tyson, should be de­tained at the Ari­ma fa­cil­i­ty.

The no­tice re­vealed that Hinds used his pow­ers un­der para­graph two of the Emer­gency Pow­ers Reg­u­la­tions cur­rent­ly in op­er­a­tion un­der the SoE.

Un­der these reg­u­la­tions, Lee can spend up to three months at the fa­cil­i­ty with­out be­ing charged.

Ac­cord­ing to the no­tice, the de­ten­tion or­der was made on the grounds that Lee was “cred­i­bly iden­ti­fied” as a leader of the Sixx gang, cit­ing his po­ten­tial dan­ger to so­ci­ety.

“The de­tainee CAR­LVIN LEE, al­so called CALVIN LEE, al­so called TYSON, has been cred­i­bly iden­ti­fied as the leader of a known crim­i­nal or­gan­i­sa­tion known as the SIXX gang, and as the per­son plan­ning and in­tend­ing to ex­e­cute vi­o­lent re­tal­ia­to­ry reprisals or oth­er vi­o­lent ac­tions in­volv­ing the use of high pow­ered weapons and ex­plo­sives, fol­low­ing an at­tempt­ed hit on his life and the mur­der of his as­so­ciate Trevor Williams on 28th De­cem­ber, 2024,” the no­tice state.

Speak­ing with Guardian Me­dia yes­ter­day, ACP North-West and Spe­cial Op­er­a­tions Richard Smith con­firmed that as of yes­ter­day, Lee was in the cus­tody of the ECRC af­ter be­ing de­tained some­time over the week­end.

He said Lee was “per­ceived as a threat to pub­lic safe­ty,” and was op­ti­mistic that his de­ten­tion would be ben­e­fi­cial to the work of po­lice.

“We be­lieve we can be mak­ing a se­ri­ous im­pact and we have oth­ers we can go af­ter, so we’re just en­ter­ing the process now as it re­lates to oth­ers,” Smith said.

“We’re do­ing what we have to do, right, dur­ing the course of the SoE, while we have the au­thor­i­ty and pow­ers to do so. We want the pub­lic to know that all this is geared at mak­ing the place safer.”

Smith said while he could not di­vulge much more in­for­ma­tion, but said there were oth­ers the po­lice were in­ter­est­ed in as they seek to ini­ti­ate the process to have them de­tained as well.

Guardian Me­dia at­tempt­ed to con­tact Lee’s at­tor­ney Pamela El­der, SC, for com­ment via phone call and What­sApp mes­sages but was un­suc­cess­ful.

Ear­li­er this month, El­der said she in­tend­ed to write Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Er­la Hare­wood-Christo­pher over con­cerns per­tain­ing to the de­ten­tion of Lee, who at the time was un­der house ar­rest.

Al­so con­tact­ed for com­ment yes­ter­day, Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Fitzger­ald Hinds ad­vised that the po­lice be con­tact­ed in­stead.

Lee’s de­ten­tion comes one week af­ter for­mer state wit­ness Shum­ba James was or­dered to be de­tained at the ECRC. James be­came the first per­son de­tained un­der the SoE or­ders.

James pre­vi­ous­ly served as a wit­ness in the State’s un­suc­cess­ful pros­e­cu­tion of six po­lice of­fi­cers charged in con­nec­tion with the fa­tal shoot­ing of his girl­friend Alana Dun­can, of San Fer­nan­do, and friends, Abi­gail John­son and Ker­ron “Fin­gers” Ec­cles, both of St Mary’s Vil­lage. James pre­vi­ous­ly faced sep­a­rate charges of home in­va­sion and at­tempt­ed mur­der.

Dur­ing a me­dia brief­ing at the Po­lice Ad­min­is­tra­tion Build­ing, Port-of-Spain, yes­ter­day, DCP Op­er­a­tions Ju­nior Ben­jamin re­port­ed that since the State of Emer­gency was de­clared on De­cem­ber 30, 2024, some 1,193 pri­or­i­ty of­fend­ers had been tar­get­ed in po­lice op­er­a­tions.