An­na-Lisa Paul

Se­nior Re­porter

an­na-lisa.paul@guardian.co.tt

A to­tal of 14 peo­ple, who were in­car­cer­at­ed un­der the au­thor­i­ty of a Pre­ven­tive De­ten­tion Or­der (PDO) dur­ing the State of Emer­gency (SoE), are to be charged on or be­fore Sun­day, when it is due to ex­pire.

Se­nior T&T Po­lice Ser­vice (TTPS) of­fi­cials yes­ter­day con­firmed the charges will in­clude a slew of gang-re­lat­ed of­fences against mem­bers of two gangs.

On Tues­day, act­ing Deputy Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice (DCP), Op­er­a­tions, Curt Si­mon con­firmed that 50 peo­ple had been de­tained via PDOs and they re­main at the East­ern Cor­rec­tion­al Re­ha­bil­i­ta­tion Cen­tre (ECRC) in San­ta Rosa, Ari­ma.

Even as of­fi­cials con­tin­ued to fi­nalise the charges yes­ter­day, Guardian Me­dia was told, “We are con­fi­dent we would be charg­ing 14 per­sons on or be­fore April 13.”

Say­ing this num­ber would be from among the group cur­rent­ly de­tained at the ECRC, one of­fi­cial said, “The of­fences are all gang re­lat­ed.”

Con­tact­ed yes­ter­day, Si­mon com­mend­ed, “all the of­fi­cers in­volved in these in­ves­ti­ga­tions, know­ing the in­tri­ca­cies and com­plex­i­ties of a gang in­ves­ti­ga­tion, that in such a short pe­ri­od of time we were able to gath­er enough ev­i­dence, as that meant con­vert­ing a lot of in­tel­li­gence in­to ev­i­dence to be able to pre­fer charges against per­sons.”

Si­mon added, “I ap­plaud the in­ves­ti­ga­tors from the Spe­cial In­ves­ti­ga­tions Unit and the di­vi­sion­al gang units for their ef­forts.”

How­ev­er, he de­clined to iden­ti­fy the 14 peo­ple who would be charged.

And al­though the re­main­ing 36 peo­ple will be re­leased af­ter the SoE ends at mid­night on Sun­day, Si­mon again re­in­forced that charges can be brought against them in the fu­ture, as in­ves­ti­ga­tions will con­tin­ue af­ter the SoE.

He said, “We are build­ing up some oth­er cas­es but it will take us just some­where short­ly be­yond the ex­pi­ra­tion of the SoE to com­plete them.”

Un­der para­graph two of the Sched­ule of the Emer­gency Pow­ers Reg­u­la­tions 2024, the Min­is­ter of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty can or­der a de­ten­tion to pre­vent an in­di­vid­ual from “act­ing in a man­ner prej­u­di­cial to pub­lic safe­ty or pub­lic or­der in de­fence of Trinidad and To­ba­go.”

Dur­ing a me­dia brief­ing ear­li­er this week, Si­mon had ex­plained that, “the ma­jor­i­ty of per­sons ar­rest­ed dur­ing the SoE were gang mem­bers, and most of the cas­es that we are look­ing at comes un­der that gang are­na and mak­ing out a gang case, re­gard­less of where you go in any ju­ris­dic­tion in this world, you would see it re­al­ly takes a con­sid­er­able amount of time to do and ex­e­cute and we are ex­pe­ri­enc­ing that here.”

While there have been no chal­lenges yet from per­sons de­tained dur­ing the SoE, Si­mon is an­tic­i­pat­ing they will come. How­ev­er, he de­fend­ed the ef­forts of law en­force­ment, as he said they had been care­ful to con­duct their ac­tiv­i­ties with­in the pa­ra­me­ters out­lined in the SoE reg­u­la­tions whilst up­hold­ing every­one’s con­sti­tu­tion­al rights.

“It is a sor­ry state that the coun­try had to go in­to an SoE to re­duce crim­i­nal­i­ty,” Si­mon said.

This, he said, was ev­i­dence of “the ero­sion of our so­cial fab­ric and we re­al­ly need to get back to that space, that place, where per­sons can re­al­ly have re­spect, not just for one for the oth­er but have re­spect for life.”

“The po­lice will con­tin­ue to ex­e­cute our man­date, which is to up­hold law and or­der, and to en­force it in a man­ner where favours and af­fec­tion would not be a con­sid­er­a­tion in us ex­e­cut­ing our man­date,” he said.