An­na-Lisa Paul

Se­nior Re­porter

an­na-lisa.paul@guardian.co.tt

The T&T Po­lice Ser­vice (TTPS) is cur­rent­ly search­ing for 13 per­sons of in­ter­est for whom Pre­ven­tive De­ten­tion Or­ders (PDOs) un­der the cur­rent State of Emer­gency (SoE) have been is­sued.

This was con­firmed by act­ing Deputy Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice (DCP) Curt Si­mon dur­ing a me­dia brief­ing at the Po­lice Ad­min­is­tra­tion Build­ing, Port-of-Spain, yes­ter­day.

Si­mon re­vealed that 44 of 57 peo­ple for whom PDOs had been is­sued had been de­tained so far and it was prov­ing chal­leng­ing to round up the re­main­ing in­di­vid­u­als.

The act­ing DCP ex­plained, “Yes, there are some per­sons, who, there are or­ders that have been grant­ed and we are to do the need­ful as they are evad­ing or seem­ing­ly avoid­ing con­tact with the po­lice.”

Of the 44 de­tained via PDOs, Si­mon cat­e­gor­i­cal­ly dis­missed pub­lic sug­ges­tion that no charges would even­tu­al­ly be laid against these per­sons.

“This po­lice ser­vice, we are look­ing at bring­ing a num­ber of charges to per­sons who are de­tained,” he as­sured.

He said the charges the de­tained in­di­vid­u­als will be fac­ing in­clude mur­der; con­spir­a­cy to mur­der; con­spir­a­cy to do oth­er crimes; and var­i­ous gang of­fences.

Si­mon said in­ves­ti­ga­tors were con­stant­ly plan­ning and striv­ing to put pres­sure on the crim­i­nal el­e­ments as the SoE con­tin­ues.

Join­ing the act­ing Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice (CoP) Ju­nior Ben­jamin in ap­plaud­ing of­fi­cers for their con­tin­ued ded­i­ca­tion to the job, as they had been work­ing con­sis­tent­ly since the SoE took ef­fect on De­cem­ber 30, 2024, Si­mon said a to­tal of 85 op­er­a­tions had been con­duct­ed in 48 hours be­fore the me­dia brief­ing.

Ben­jamin said with 74 mur­ders record­ed for the year to date; com­pared to 107 in 2024; and 118 in 2023. Both men agreed there had been an in­cre­men­tal in­crease in these fig­ures since the year be­gan.

Si­mon ac­knowl­edged, “I know that over that last week­end there were sev­en mur­ders, that per­sons were very much con­cerned about and we too, the TTPS, have some con­cerns when we see mur­ders take on that splurge.”

Say­ing there had been an ap­pear­ance of a re­duc­tion in mur­ders since the start of 2025, he said re­cent de­vel­op­ments could be in­ter­pret­ed as “out of the or­di­nary in terms of what was hap­pen­ing dur­ing the year thus far.”

How­ev­er, both of­fi­cials agreed that one mur­der was too much.

Not­ing that of­fi­cers had since man­aged to solve two of the sev­en mur­ders that oc­curred over the re­cent­ly con­clud­ed Car­ni­val week­end, Si­mon said they were aim­ing to keep this rate up.

SoE de­ci­sions rest with Govt

Mean­while, with the cur­rent SoE sched­uled to ex­pire on April 13, Ben­jamin said any ques­tions of a fur­ther ex­ten­sion rests sole­ly with the Gov­ern­ment.

Re­spond­ing to ques­tions as to whether or not the TTPS had rec­om­mend­ed or had been part of any dis­cus­sions with a view to ex­tend­ing it, Ben­jamin, said, “The whole idea of the SoE rests in the hands of the Gov­ern­ment and I will not want to ven­ture there.”

Re­gard­ing ru­mours that a cur­few was to be ex­pect­ed, he said they were on­ly about en­sur­ing the safe­ty of T&T.

“We will wait and see what the out­come will be,” he said.