Gail Alexan­der

Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter John Sandy is not sat­is­fied that on­ly 15 guns have been con­fis­cat­ed in the crime clean-up op­er­a­tions so far. How­ev­er, At­tor­ney Gen­er­al Anand Ram­lo­gan, who said am­mu­ni­tion was the crux of the prob­lem, is sat­is­fied that more than 1,000 rounds of am­mu­ni­tion have been found. Dif­fer­ent views by both state of­fi­cials came on Day Eight of the state of emer­gency. Speak­ing at yes­ter­day's dai­ly me­dia brief­ing at the Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­istry, Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Dwayne Gibbs said the to­tal of those de­tained and ar­rest­ed now stands at 789, in­clud­ing 293 per­sons held for gang re­lat­ed mat­ters.

Gibbs said 117 were ar­rest­ed be­tween last Sat­ur­day and yes­ter­day. (See box at right.) Ac­cord­ing to the top cop, the to­tal num­ber of weapons was 15 guns. A to­tal of a thou­sand rounds of am­mu­ni­tion was al­so dis­cov­ered since op­er­a­tions be­gan. On whether the Gov­ern­ment was sat­is­fied with the num­ber of guns seized, Sandy said: "To­tal­ly not." He added: "(But) were we to find one firearm and ar­rest two peo­ple for crim­i­nal in­tent, I'll still say this state of emer­gency was suc­cess­ful be­cause of what we would have avert­ed." AG Ram­lo­gan added: "What we've seen is that peo­ple may have one firearm and it's shared or ro­tat­ed around gang mem­bers to com­mit crimes. The crux of the mat­ter is am­mu­ni­tion and we've round­ed up al­most 1,000 rounds-that's po­ten­tial­ly 1,000 lives saved."

Gibbs said: "Any guns out of the bad guys' hands is a suc­cess-that's one less weapon that can be used for vi­o­lent or il­le­gal pur­pos­es. We start small and con­tin­ue work­ing." De­fence Force head Ken­rick Ma­haraj said army op­er­a­tions had pur­sued spe­cif­ic tar­gets since Sat­ur­day, nab­bing one "promi­nent" gang mem­ber in San­ta Cruz. Ma­haraj said Coast Guard pa­trols in the First Bo­ca, Cen­tipede Is­land and Gas­par Grande in­ter­cept­ed 44 ves­sels and 140 peo­ple were tak­en to the Coast Guard's Staubles Bay base for search. He added that Coast Guard op­er­a­tions had been in­ten­si­fied. Ma­haraj de­clined com­ment on re­ports that the ves­sels had been at a Down-the-Is­lands par­ty.

On a re­port that im­pris­oned gang mem­bers want­ed to unite, Ram­lo­gan said they might seem to want to form "a lil crime army" (sic) to fight se­cu­ri­ty forces out of ne­ces­si­ty for their own sur­vival. "(But) that will not hap­pen un­der the se­cu­ri­ty forces' watch," he added. Sandy said prison au­thor­i­ties had de­cid­ed to sep­a­rate im­pris­oned gang mem­bers out of con­cern that they might want to unite. "If what we're hear­ing is true, we ac­tu­al­ly want­ed them to come to­geth­er, not fight each oth­er – but it would not be wise (to come af­ter the Gov­ern­ment.)"

Asked about the South Amer­i­can con­nec­tions in the re­cent $22m drug bust which helped trig­ger the state of emer­gency, Sandy con­firmed there had been "for­eign in­put." Sandy and Ram­lo­gan said there have been few com­plaints of bru­tal­i­ty or ex­ces­sive force from the na­tion­al com­mu­ni­ty dur­ing the state of emer­gency.

AR­REST­ED

• 117 ar­rest­ed over Sat­ur­day and yes­ter­day

• 26 gang-re­lat­ed mat­ters

• 26 drug-re­lat­ed is­sues

• 16 cur­few break­ing

• 31 se­ri­ous crim­i­nal of­fences

• 15 on out­stand­ing war­rants

• 15 ar­rest­ed by army road blocks at Va­len­cia, Tu­na­puna and Pi­ar­co for drugs, drunk dri­ving and oth­er charges.

• One ar­rest­ed on a ves­sel at Mara­cas Bay for pos­ses­sion of an il­le­gal sub­stance.