Per­haps the strongest in­di­ca­tion that the Min­istry of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty was not en­gaged in busi­ness as usu­al was the news that two per­sons, de­scribed as be­ing among Trinidad and To­ba­go's "biggest gang lead­ers," had been held at the Hy­att Ho­tel. The two al­leged gang mem­bers, held along with a woman de­scribed as a "pub­lic re­la­tions of­fi­cer" in a so­phis­ti­cat­ed crim­i­nal hi­er­ar­chy de­scribed by the Gov­ern­ment dur­ing a brief­ing on Fri­day, were not go­ing out of their way to be incog­ni­to. The three were held af­ter ac­tiv­i­ties that would not be out of line with a sybarit­ic va­ca­tion. They had a pro­ces­sion of vis­i­tors and pros­ti­tutes at the pres­i­den­tial suites of the Hy­att. Did the ar­rest­ing of­fi­cers in­ter­cede in nor­mal se­nior gang mem­ber ac­tiv­i­ties or a cur­few-in­duced va­ca­tion for the se­nior man­age­ment of a crim­i­nal en­ter­prise?

So many ques­tions re­main to be asked about that en­gage­ment, but none of the se­nior per­sons at the press ta­ble at Fri­day's press con­fer­ence seemed aware of the Hy­att ar­rest. "We have a lot of op­er­a­tions in progress," ex­plained Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice Dwayne Gibbs. Po­lice spokes­men would lat­er ex­plain that the ar­rest­ed per­sons were be­lieved to be in­volved in ex­ten­sive drug traf­fick­ing and gun­run­ning and the al­leged lead­ers of a ma­jor gang op­er­a­tion in East Port-of-Spain. All was not ob­fus­ca­tion at the press con­fer­ence, how­ev­er, as At­tor­ney Gen­er­al Anand Ram­lo­gan, now clear­ly steeped in the ar­chi­tec­ture and lan­guage of lo­cal gangs, ex­plained in some de­tail the threat that or­gan­ised crime posed to law-abid­ing cit­i­zens in Trinidad and To­ba­go.

Steer­ing me­dia away from the no­tion of busi­ness-suit­ed ex­ec­u­tives as the "big fish" be­ing sought by the po­lice, the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al ex­plained that the crim­i­nal lead­er­ship the po­lice were af­ter "don't wear jack­et and tie, but they have more mon­ey than the man in jack­et and tie." AG Ram­lo­gan's pre­sen­ta­tion to the me­dia on Fri­day of­fered more in­for­ma­tion about the ar­chi­tec­ture of lo­cal crim­i­nals and gang in­fra­struc­ture than had been pre­vi­ous­ly avail­able for pub­lic con­sump­tion and may well re­flect the ac­qui­si­tion of en­riched in­tel­li­gence about the crim­i­nals who have so suc­cess­ful­ly op­posed the Po­lice.

The pub­lic was in­vit­ed by Mr Ram­lo­gan to for­get Nel­son Street and the Plan­nings as head­quar­ters for gang lead­ers and he de­scribed a new gen­er­a­tion of crim­i­nals with mul­ti­ple res­i­dences and a will­ing­ness to pay lav­ish­ly for ser­vices in "cash mon­ey," to quote the street savvy AG. These are gang boss­es with a taste not just for the lux­u­ries of the Hy­att. They have di­ver­si­fied in­to dance­halls and night­clubs, they pro­mote fetes and con­certs and spon­sor com­mu­ni­ty ac­tiv­i­ties. The in­for­ma­tion emerg­ing from the first week of an­ti-crime ac­tiv­i­ty dur­ing the state of emer­gency and the cur­few on de­clared hotspots re­mains spot­ty and dis­joint­ed and it's un­der­stand­able that the Min­is­ter of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty and the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al can­not con­nect the in­tel­li­gence dots more clear­ly for gen­er­al un­der­stand­ing.

In­ci­dents such as an al­leged beat­ing by sol­diers at For­res Park are quick­ly coun­tered by Gov­ern­ment al­le­ga­tions of gang­land in­cen­tives to "take a lash" for pay and show it off to me­dia cam­eras. The un­remit­ting ef­fort to pro­mote the se­ri­ous­ness of the cam­paign to dis­rupt and dis­man­tle gangs was giv­en sharp­er teeth by Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar as she hand­ed out keys for a Clifton Street HDC hous­ing project. "And for those bent on re­main­ing in a life of crim­i­nal­i­ty, we will take them out in one way or an­oth­er," the Prime Min­is­ter an­nounced at the cer­e­mo­ny.

The un­cer­tain­ties of the present will de­mand more clar­i­ty and ex­pla­na­tion when Trinidad and To­ba­go emerges from this en­forced se­cu­ri­ty lock­down and the de­mands of due process are en­forced on the hun­dreds of ar­rests that have tak­en place over the last few days. This is when the qual­i­ty of po­lice­work and ev­i­dence gath­er­ing done dur­ing the cur­rent state of emer­gency will make the dif­fer­ence be­tween a tem­po­rary stay in cells at the Gov­ern­ment's plea­sure and sol­id, sus­tain­able cas­es that will stand up in court and make a re­al dif­fer­ence in strikes on the elab­o­rate gang in­fra­struc­tures that the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al de­scribed on Fri­day.