Rhon­da Krys­tal Ram­bal­ly

Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Dwayne Gibbs says 315 peo­ple have been ar­rest­ed since the in­sti­tu­tion of the state of emer­gency. Gibbs said from 8 am on Wednes­day to 8 am yes­ter­day, 183 peo­ple were ar­rest­ed. He said dai­ly crime had been sub­stan­tial­ly re­duced. His mes­sage to the crim­i­nal el­e­ments who be­lieved they could es­cape: "We are gonna come af­ter you." He said of the 183 ar­rests, 59 were for gang-re­lat­ed ac­tiv­i­ties; nine were for homi­cides; 17 for drug-re­lat­ed of­fences; 25 for breach­es of the cur­few; one firearm-re­lat­ed of­fence; six for se­ri­ous of­fences and 66 for out­stand­ing war­rants. Gibbs was speak­ing at the post-Cab­i­net news brief­ing yes­ter­day at the Of­fice of the Prime Min­is­ter, St Clair.

It was the first time a Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er spoke at a post-Cab­i­net news brief­ing. Gibbs said: "It brings our to­tal up to 315 peo­ple ar­rest­ed since the state of emer­gency was placed in­to ef­fect and 115 of those ar­rests were gang-re­lat­ed. Again, we are see­ing some suc­cess. "Our crime rate, in terms of the dai­ly crime that is oc­cur­ring, is sub­stan­tial­ly re­duced and we are start­ing to see some gains in terms of the gang-re­lat­ed tar­gets." Gibbs said the 315 ar­rest­ed peo­ple were still in cus­tody at hold­ing bay cells through­out the coun­try. He added: "We are work­ing to put the peo­ple that have been ar­rest­ed, that will be charged, through to the pris­ons' sys­tem.

"Those that are be­ing de­tained, we'll look to see if there is any rea­son to con­tin­ue to hold them and we will re­lease them ac­cord­ing­ly." Gibbs said he "mis-spoke" on Wednes­day when he said the cur­few was en­forced through­out T&T. He said his in­tent was to say the state of emer­gency was through­out the coun­try. Chief of De­fence Staff Brigadier Ken­rick Ma­haraj, who al­so at­tend­ed the post-Cab­i­net meet­ing, said the units of army con­duct­ed 36 mo­bile pa­trols through­out T&T. He said there were "stop-and-search' op­er­a­tions in Diego Mar­tin, Mar­aval and Port-of-Spain. Ma­haraj said: "In the Port-of-Spain area we had two ar­rests of per­sons who were in pos­ses­sion of il­le­gal drugs.

"Cause and search­es were done in Mara­bel­la, Clax­ton Bay, Long­denville and Ch­agua­nas." A num­ber of ve­hic­u­lar search­es were done but no ar­rests were made in St Au­gus­tine, Sea Lots, Bel­mont, Wood­brook, St James and Co­corite, Ma­haraj said. Gibbs said "a large drug traf­fick­er" al­so was ar­rest­ed from To­ba­go. He said the per­son was a Trinida­di­an. "For those that think they can es­cape the net that we are putting out there, I just want to say go ahead and try, we are gonna come af­ter you," Gibbs added.