Shane Su­perville

Se­nior Re­porter

shane.su­perville@guardian.co.tt

As the State of Emer­gency (SoE) draws to a close, act­ing Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Ju­nior Ben­jamin says work to lay charges against per­sons de­tained is on­go­ing.

In an in­ter­view on CNC3’s Morn­ing Brew yes­ter­day, Ben­jamin did not di­vulge de­tails about the num­ber of per­sons ex­pect­ed to be charged or the charges they will face but said in­ves­ti­ga­tors are work­ing to “turn in­tel­li­gence in­to charges.”

He con­firmed that per­sons in pre­ven­ta­tive de­ten­tion are the fo­cus of these en­quiries.

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.”

T&T Po­lice Ser­vice (TTPS) da­ta shows that as of yes­ter­day morn­ing, at least 80 peo­ple were in cus­tody for var­i­ous crim­i­nal of­fences. In com­par­i­son, 23 peo­ple had been held for gang ac­tiv­i­ties since the SoE was de­clared in De­cem­ber.

The da­ta showed that 54 peo­ple were ar­rest­ed un­der the SoE reg­u­la­tions and 18 peo­ple were de­tained at the East­ern Cor­rec­tion­al and Re­ha­bil­i­ta­tion Cen­tre (ECRC) in San­ta Rosa, Ari­ma.

Asked whether the TTPS an­tic­i­pat­ed any le­gal ac­tion by de­tainees when the SoE ends on April 13, Ben­jamin said he is con­fi­dent po­lice of­fi­cers con­duct­ed them­selves pro­fes­sion­al­ly, act­ed on valid in­tel­li­gence and are pre­pared for any le­gal chal­lenges that might arise.

“We en­sure what we do is in­tel­li­gence-led, ev­i­dence-based so­lu­tions to crime, so even when these things are chal­lenged we know that we have act­ed in ac­cor­dance with the rule of law and we are not afraid if that hap­pens, be­cause we know that this is some­thing that is well planned out and if it goes be­fore a court of law, we are on the side of the law,” he said.

Af­ter the 2011 SoE which took place un­der the then Peo­ple’s Part­ner­ship coali­tion gov­ern­ment, sev­er­al de­tainees sought le­gal re­dress for wrong­ful ar­rest and vi­o­la­tion of their rights, which led to the State pay­ing mon­ey for dam­ages.

Con­tact­ed for com­ment, crim­i­nal de­fence at­tor­ney Fa­reed Ali said he did not see the SoE as an ef­fec­tive so­lu­tion to crim­i­nal­i­ty, de­scrib­ing it as a “des­per­ate at­tempt” for the au­thor­i­ties to show they are ad­dress­ing crime.

“From a de­fence at­tor­ney’s point-of-view, you are vi­o­lat­ing the rights and the le­gal priv­i­leges and vi­o­lat­ing the struc­tures in place of crim­i­nal law where per­sons are brought to jus­tice based on fac­tu­al ev­i­dence and a rea­son­able ba­sis to be­lieve they are in­volved in any­thing crim­i­nal,” Ali said.

“This mech­a­nism they are us­ing vi­o­lates the rights of reg­u­lar cit­i­zens who there is no such strong ev­i­dence of, yet still be­cause the po­lice op­er­at­ing un­der this or­di­nance have ar­rest­ed peo­ple at the back­door when they couldn’t do it at the front, it gives them a re­lease mech­a­nism where they’re do­ing the cor­rect thing and us­ing the wrong for­mu­la.

“So the re­sult is al­ways one of per­sons suf­fer vi­o­la­tions for which there is no re­dress be­cause the or­di­nance al­lows the po­lice to abuse their in­ves­tiga­tive pow­ers in a man­ner like this.”

Ali said while some peo­ple might have been un­fair­ly tar­get­ed un­der the emer­gency reg­u­la­tions, un­like the 2011 SoE, the cur­rent reg­u­la­tions make it dif­fi­cult for de­tainees to take le­gal ac­tion un­less very spe­cif­ic grounds are met.

He ex­plained, “Un­less these per­sons were met with vi­o­lence while they were at the prison, or they were de­prived of oth­er hu­man rights, very lit­tle suc­cess would be drawn from bring­ing a law­suit against the state.

“In oth­er words, the mere sus­pen­sion of their lib­er­ty may be an un­chal­lenge­able ul­ti­ma­tum un­der the Emer­gency Pow­ers Or­di­nance.

“The per­sons who did suc­ceed in 2011, there were ex­em­plary po­si­tions where the vi­o­la­tions they suf­fered was more than just the de­ten­tion, it was the de­ten­tion with abus­es so I can an­tic­i­pate per­sons seek­ing le­gal re­dress but can they af­ford it?”

ACP in charge of the Crim­i­nal Di­vi­sion Richard Smith, who was al­so a guest on The Morn­ing Brew pro­gramme, said the SoE has been ef­fec­tive in achiev­ing a de­crease in mur­ders and oth­er cat­e­gories of crime.

As of yes­ter­day morn­ing, there were 98 mur­ders for the year so far, com­pared to 141 for the same pe­ri­od in 2024.

Smith said po­lice were able to ex­e­cute tar­get­ed search­es and op­er­a­tions against crim­i­nals and al­so used the SoE to gath­er as much in­for­ma­tion as pos­si­ble against pri­or­i­ty of­fend­ers.

“Whether we get firearms, whether we get nar­cotics or any­thing we get there, we are in fact suc­cess­ful be­cause we gath­er in­for­ma­tion in the first in­stance we are able to cre­ate in­tel­li­gence.

“We are able to cre­ate pro­files on per­sons so when­ev­er any­body else has to go there to that lo­ca­tion, they have all the in­for­ma­tion, in­tel­li­gence, every­thing that re­lates to that lo­ca­tion,” he said.