RHON­DOR DOWLAT

Se­nior Re­porter

rhon­dor.dowlat@guardian.co.tt

Min­is­ter of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Fitzger­ald Hinds has is­sued a third de­ten­tion or­der un­der the Emer­gency Pow­ers Reg­u­la­tions, 2024, amidst ris­ing threats to pub­lic safe­ty and es­ca­lat­ing vi­o­lence against prison of­fi­cers.

The lat­est or­der, signed on Thurs­day, au­tho­rised the de­ten­tion of Joshua Roberts, al­so known as “Jaf­fa” or “Jaf­far,” of But­ter­cup Av­enue, Pine Set­tle­ment, Ojoe Road, San­gre Grande.

Ac­cord­ing to in­tel­li­gence re­ports in a Le­gal No­tice pub­lished in the T&T Gazette yes­ter­day, Roberts was re­cruit­ed to car­ry out tar­get­ed at­tacks on prison of­fi­cers us­ing high-pow­ered weapons, a sit­u­a­tion al­leged­ly or­ches­trat­ed by a high-rank­ing in­car­cer­at­ed crim­i­nal. Roberts is to be de­tained at the East­ern Cor­rec­tion­al Re­ha­bil­i­ta­tion Cen­tre in San­ta Rosa or an­oth­er des­ig­nat­ed lo­ca­tion.

The de­ten­tion comes amid grow­ing con­cerns over the safe­ty of prison of­fi­cers. Crim­i­nal el­e­ments have re­cent­ly placed boun­ties rang­ing from $200,000 to $350,000 on of­fi­cers’ lives. Just this week, the home of a prison of­fi­cer in Mal­abar was sprayed with 21 bul­lets, caus­ing sig­nif­i­cant dam­age. For­tu­nate­ly, no in­juries were re­port­ed. This at­tack fol­lowed two sim­i­lar in­ci­dents along the Cara­po Main Road last Wednes­day, where of­fi­cers’ homes were al­so tar­get­ed.

Prison Of­fi­cers’ As­so­ci­a­tion (POA) Sec­re­tary Gen­er­al Lester Lo­gie has con­firmed the threats in­ten­si­fied af­ter the trans­fer of vi­o­lent gang lead­ers from Build­ing 13 at the Max­i­mum Se­cu­ri­ty Prison (MSP) in Arou­ca, which the POA had been ad­vo­cat­ing for years.

The POA has been vo­cal in de­mand­ing pro­tec­tion for of­fi­cers, in­clud­ing amend­ments to the Firearms Act to al­low of­fi­cers to pur­chase per­son­al firearms and bul­let­proof vests.

Mean­while, Min­is­ter Hinds has de­fend­ed his de­ci­sion to in­voke emer­gency pow­ers for pre­ven­tive de­ten­tions.

On Jan­u­ary 17, he au­tho­rised the de­ten­tion of Calvin Lee, al­so known as “Tyson,” who was iden­ti­fied as the leader of the SIXX gang in the or­der. Lee is ac­cused of plan­ning vi­o­lent re­tal­ia­to­ry ac­tions in­volv­ing high-pow­ered weapons and ex­plo­sives. An­oth­er de­ten­tion or­der, signed on Jan­u­ary 13, tar­get­ed Shum­ba James, a for­mer State wit­ness ac­cused of plot­ting to mur­der key wit­ness­es in a case against him.