Yvonne Ba­boolal

Or­gan­ised crime groups are well es­tab­lished and it is an up­hill chal­lenge for the po­lice to gath­er ev­i­dence against them that would lead to their ar­rest, Deputy Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Jack Ewats­ki said yes­ter­day. Ewats­ki was re­spond­ing to ques­tions from the me­dia on the re­lease of sev­er­al "big fish" who were held by the po­lice dur­ing the cur­rent state of emer­gency, but lat­er re­leased due to a lack of ev­i­dence. He spoke to the me­dia af­ter de­liv­er­ing the fea­ture ad­dress at a break­fast meet­ing or­gan­ised by the Ch­agua­nas Cham­ber of Com­merce on the is­sue of crime. It was held at Kam-Po Restau­rant in Ch­agua­nas.

Cedric "Burkie" Burke, of Sea Lots and his dri­ver, Keon "Baine" Bain, of Mar­aval, de­scribed by law en­force­ment au­thor­i­ties as "big fish," were freed on Tues­day by Se­nior Mag­is­trate Cher­ril-Anne Blake in the Port-of-Spain Eight Mag­is­trate's Court be­cause of in­suf­fi­cient ev­i­dence against them. The two were ar­rest­ed at the Hy­att Re­gency, Port-of-Spain, on Au­gust 26 by Crim­i­nal In­tel­li­gence Unit of­fi­cers un­der the An­ti-Gang Act. Some 499 peo­ple were ar­rest­ed on gang-re­lat­ed charges up to Sep­tem­ber 22. Up to last Wednes­day, 113 of them had been freed by the courts be­cause the Di­rec­tor of Pub­lic Pros­e­cu­tions felt there was a lack of suf­fi­cient ev­i­dence against them.

Asked to re­spond to calls from the civ­il rights group, Fix­in T&T, for the re­moval of Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Dwayne Gibbs over the mat­ter, Ewats­ki said: "There is the Po­lice Ser­vice Com­mis­sion (PSC) for those like Fix­in T&T. "They should com­mu­ni­cate their opin­ion to the chair­man (of the PSC)," he said.