At­tor­ney Gen­er­al Anand Ram­lo­gan has as­sured the pub­lic that "big fish" crim­i­nals are be­ing tar­get­ed and caught by law en­force­ment of­fi­cials dur­ing the state of emer­gency. Ram­lo­gan was speak­ing at yes­ter­day's post-Cab­i­net me­dia brief­ing, held at the Of­fice of the Prime Min­is­ter, St Clair Av­enue, St Clair.

He was re­spond­ing to pub­lic crit­i­cisms that the state of emer­gency had failed to net any "big fish" and had on­ly man­aged to catch the "small fries" in the crim­i­nal world. Ram­lo­gan said: "The idea that we are not go­ing af­ter the big fish is in­cor­rect. Peo­ple seem to think these gangs and gang lead­ers are small fries. The gangs we are af­ter are very or­gan­ised, they are struc­tured, it is a crim­i­nal en­ter­prise."

He said the high lev­els of il­le­gal ac­tiv­i­ty and the amount of mon­ey in­volved in their ac­tiv­i­ties made them "very big fish." Ram­lo­gan said the tar­get­ed gangs were high­ly so­phis­ti­cat­ed, with rank­ings, street sta­tus, per­son­al creeds, colours and dress codes. He said the per­cep­tion that the Gov­ern­ment was fail­ing to tar­get and catch the "big fish" crim­i­nals was "to­tal­ly mis­con­strued." Ram­lo­gan said: "To think that we are not go­ing af­ter these big fish is wrong. We are go­ing af­ter the big fish and we are catch­ing the big fish."

Pressed by the me­dia as to whether it was the con­vic­tion rate ver­sus the ar­rest rate that would be used to de­ter­mine the suc­cess of the ex­er­cise, Ram­lo­gan said con­vic­tions would be in hands of the de­part­ment of pros­e­cu­tions.

He said the suc­cess of the state of emer­gency ex­er­cise would be de­ter­mined ac­cord­ing to the num­ber of ar­rests and seizures. Ram­lo­gan said thus far, the ex­er­cise had been a "re­sound­ing suc­cess." Ram­lo­gan said it was "phe­nom­e­nal" that four peo­ple were be­ing ar­rest­ed every hour. He said that was ac­cord­ing to his es­ti­ma­tion of 315 ar­rests in 87 hours. He said the Gov­ern­ment's de­ci­sion to de­clare a state of emer­gency was catch­ing on in oth­er coun­tries. The AG said there were news­pa­per re­port com­ing out of St Kitts that the Op­po­si­tion was ad­vis­ing the Gov­ern­ment to con­sid­er "a sim­i­lar op­tion" where gang-re­lat­ed vi­o­lence was pos­ing a prob­lem. "The prob­lem of gang-re­lat­ed vi­o­lence and vi­o­lent crime and that kind of es­ca­la­tion and up­surge is not unique to Trinidad and To­ba­go and the ac­tions and de­ci­sive...the firm ac­tion tak­en by this gov­ern­ment is one that is not in any sense iso­lat­ed or in a vac­u­um ar­bi­trary," he said.

Ram­lo­gan said a com­mit­tee had been set up with rep­re­sen­ta­tives from the T&T Pris­ons, Po­lice Ser­vice, De­fence Force and the Min­istry of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty re­gard­ing ca­pac­i­ty at the jails. He called on cit­i­zens to con­tin­ue to pro­vide "in­tel­li­gence." He said asked those liv­ing in ar­eas sus­pect­ed of al­low­ing the en­try of il­le­gal firearms in­to the coun­try such as To­co, Mara­cas and Man­zanil­la to come for­ward with in­for­ma­tion. "This is your time to share in­tel­li­gence with the po­lice and the army so that we as a Gov­ern­ment and as one peo­ple can take ac­tion and clamp down on these il­le­gal ac­tiv­i­ties in your com­mu­ni­ties," Ram­lo­gan said.

Ali­cia Llanos and Rhon­da Krys­tal Ram­bal­ly