Eliz­a­beth Gon­za­les

Se­nior Re­porter

eliz­a­beth.gon­za­les@guardian.co.tt

Calls are be­ing made for the State to apol­o­gise to hun­dreds of peo­ple de­tained in prison fa­cil­i­ties un­der Pre­ven­tive De­ten­tion Or­ders, as the present State of Emer­gency is sched­uled to come to an end next week.

Last Fri­day, the Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter said 240 were charged, leav­ing over 300 peo­ple leav­ing the var­i­ous prison fa­cil­i­ties with­out any charges be­ing laid.

As de­tainees start­ed to be re­leased on Sep­tem­ber 10, for­mer House Speak­er Nizam Mo­hammed said State rep­re­sen­ta­tives should meet with those be­ing re­leased, ex­plain what hap­pened un­der the emer­gency reg­u­la­tions and apol­o­gise to them. Hu­man rights ad­vo­cate Denise Pitch­er al­so backed an apol­o­gy but said it should on­ly be a first step.

“But hav­ing to be ex­posed to those sub­hu­man con­di­tions, and then the fear of you don’t know what’s go­ing to hap­pen to you, pro­longed de­ten­tion, if you have no le­gal rep­re­sen­ta­tion, you can’t see a light at the end of the tun­nel, what is go­ing to hap­pen to me? You’re at the mer­cy of the State and their ac­tions. So it’s a trau­ma­tis­ing sit­u­a­tion,” Pitch­er told Guardian Me­dia.

“So an apol­o­gy might be the first step, but it’s def­i­nite­ly not the on­ly thing that the State should be do­ing.”

She claimed the SoE suc­ceed­ed in whip­ping a na­tion in­to sub­mis­sion.

Over 700 de­tained since De­cem­ber 2024

Since De­cem­ber 2024, Trinidad and To­ba­go has ex­pe­ri­enced three states of emer­gency dur­ing which au­thor­i­ties have used Pre­ven­tive De­ten­tion Or­ders (PDOs) to de­tain peo­ple. Across the three pe­ri­ods, the pub­licly re­port­ed fig­ures show hun­dreds of PDOs be­ing ex­e­cut­ed. Dur­ing the first state of emer­gency, de­clared un­der the for­mer Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment ad­min­is­tra­tion, which ran from De­cem­ber 30, 2024, to April 13, 2025, 50 peo­ple were de­tained un­der PDOs. Dur­ing the sec­ond state of emer­gency, from Ju­ly 18, 2025, to Jan­u­ary 31, 2026, the first de­clared un­der the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress Gov­ern­ment, po­lice re­port­ed that 153 PDOs were ex­e­cut­ed.

Dur­ing the cur­rent State of Emer­gency, which be­gan on March 3, 2026, DCP Ju­nior Ben­jamin had re­port­ed that 449 PDOs have been ex­e­cut­ed. In Par­lia­ment last Fri­day, Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Roger Alexan­der said 702 PDOs were is­sued and 573 were ex­e­cut­ed. He said of that num­ber, 240 were charged with of­fences. This means 333 peo­ple walked out of de­ten­tion to free­dom. Across the three states of emer­gency since De­cem­ber 2024, at least 776 peo­ple have been de­tained un­der Pre­ven­tive De­ten­tion Or­ders, based on pub­licly re­port­ed fig­ures.

Over­all, 905 PDos were is­sued.

As of Fri­day, Sep­tem­ber 11, 2026, Trinidad and To­ba­go has spent 494 days un­der a state of emer­gency since De­cem­ber 30, 2024.

First SoE: De­cem­ber 30, 2024–April 14, 2025 — 105 days

Sec­ond SoE: Ju­ly 18, 2025–Jan­u­ary 31, 2026 — 198 days

Third/cur­rent SoE: March 3 to Sep­tem­ber 11, 2026 — 193 days

To­tal: 496 days

The cur­rent SoE was ex­tend­ed to mid­night on Sep­tem­ber 17, 2026, mean­ing that if it re­mains in ef­fect un­til then, the cu­mu­la­tive to­tal will reach 502 days.

Re­vo­ca­tions and re­leas­es

Un­der the PNM’s De­cem­ber 2024 SoE, all 50 ex­e­cut­ed PDOs were re­voked. Po­lice re­port­ed that 39 de­tainees were re­leased and 11 peo­ple were charged.

When the UNC’s first SoE end­ed on Jan­u­ary 31, po­lice said 117 of 151 de­tainees would be re­leased. Six­teen had been charged, and an­oth­er 20 were ex­pect­ed to be charged. A lat­er po­lice ac­count put the to­tal of PDOs at 153.

Guardian Me­dia’s own cal­cu­la­tions showed there were 751 PDO no­tices across the three SoEs. Twen­ty-two peo­ple were re­ar­rest­ed dur­ing all three SoEs.

One ex­act name, Kevin Payn­ter, ap­peared in all three SoE reg­is­ters. Mark Williams ap­peared three times across the two SoEs called un­der the UNC Gov­ern­ment, as well as twice un­der the present emer­gency de­c­la­ra­tion. Al­to­geth­er, 18 names from ear­li­er SoEs reap­peared in the cur­rent reg­is­ter and ac­count­ed for 19 cur­rent no­tices.

Across all three SoEs, PDOs were sent out for 710 men and 41 women.

Fif­teen chil­dren were de­tained at the Youth Train­ing and Re­ha­bil­i­ta­tion Cen­tre un­der PDOs.

The cur­rent Gazette reg­is­ter con­tains 563 PDOs as of Sep­tem­ber 8. Of­fi­cials did not ex­plic­it­ly de­tail if the 563 no­tices amount­ed to peo­ple. In the cur­rent SoE, 530 men were de­tained. Thir­ty-three women were sent to the Women’s Prison.

The last broad po­lice fig­ure was 449 PDOs ex­e­cut­ed by Ju­ly 18. Since then, more no­tices have been pub­lished, or­ders have been re­voked, charges have been laid, and re­leas­es have be­gun.

Thir­ty-one peo­ple were re­leased from three pris­ons on Sep­tem­ber 10. Se­cu­ri­ty sources said 29 left Gold­en Grove Prison, one left the Women’s Prison, and one left the Youth Train­ing Cen­tre.

Those 31 were part of a cur­rent SoE re­lease to­tal of at least 35. The oth­er four were busi­ness­woman Star Sab­ga, busi­ness­man Do­minic Hadeed, his wife Genevieve Hadeed and dance­hall artiste Joseph Oliviere.

Five named PDO re­vo­ca­tions can al­so be traced. The Gazette records the re­vo­ca­tions for the Hadeeds, Oliviere and Pablo Manuel Guer­ra Ri­vas. Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Roger Alexan­der re­voked Sab­ga’s or­der on Sep­tem­ber 10.

Four of those five peo­ple are al­ready in­clud­ed among the 35 re­leas­es.

Six cur­rent-SoE de­tainees were pub­licly linked to charges be­fore Ju­ly. They were Malachi Fras­er, Ryan An­tho­ny Mark, Sher­wyn Mar­lon Gue­var­ro, Ji­van Coop­er, Kwame Arnold and Nicholas Cur­tis Ram­dass.

A Guardian Me­dia re­port based on po­lice in­for­ma­tion said on Ju­ly 25 that nine PDO de­tainees had been charged af­ter a pris­on­er-pro­cess­ing ex­er­cise. The re­port named on­ly sev­en de­tainees and al­so named two prison of­fi­cers. On the an­nounced fig­ures, at least 15 cur­rent-SoE de­tainees have been charged, but Guardian Me­dia could trace 13 by name. Ef­forts to get those sta­tis­tics from the TTPS, through calls to Deputy Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice Ju­nior Ben­jamin and Deputy Com­mis­sione, Suzette Mar­tin, were un­suc­cess­ful.

When de­tainees were re­leased as the first SoE un­der the UNC-Gov­ern­ment came to a close on Jan­u­ary 31, there were tears of joy and re­lief as they em­braced loved ones wait­ing for them out­side the East­ern Cor­rec­tion­al Re­ha­bil­i­ta­tion Cen­tre (ECRC), San­ta Rosa. Guardian Me­dia was there as rel­a­tives heav­i­ly crit­i­cised the Gov­ern­ment and se­cu­ri­ty agen­cies for their ac­tions, call­ing the SoE and the de­ten­tions “to­tal­ly dis­rup­tive,” “un­war­rant­ed,” and “a to­tal fail­ure.”

“More than an open gate”

Mo­hammed said the State should meet those be­ing re­leased, apol­o­gise to them, ex­plain why they were held and help them re­turn to their fam­i­lies and com­mu­ni­ties.

“Peo­ple were in­car­cer­at­ed and lost their free­doms un­der SoE reg­u­la­tions. The State was en­ti­tled to do that. How­ev­er, the hu­mane as­pect of that is that if you are go­ing to re­lease peo­ple, I be­lieve that re­lease should not be some­thing mere­ly me­chan­i­cal,” he said.

“I think re­lease should be looked at as a deep hu­man­i­tar­i­an ges­ture, in the sense that those peo­ple, we should wel­come them back in­to main­stream so­ci­ety in cer­tain ways. The State should have pro­vid­ed ways and means of talk­ing with these peo­ple.”

Mo­hammed said le­gal ac­tion against the State could be ex­pect­ed.

“What I am told is that we can ex­pect a pletho­ra of court ac­tions by a num­ber of these peo­ple who are ex­pect­ed to be re­leased,” he said.

Pitch­er ques­tioned what re­lease with­out charge said about the ev­i­dence used to jus­ti­fy de­ten­tion.

“If they had in­tel­li­gence or if they had ev­i­dence, then the next stage would have been to charge peo­ple. So what this is say­ing is that if peo­ple are be­ing re­leased with­out charge, it means that there was no ev­i­dence to charge them in the first place and that peo­ple were be­ing held for ex­tend­ed pe­ri­ods, which can be con­sid­ered ar­bi­trary de­ten­tion.”

SoE’s im­pact on crime

Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar de­fend­ed the Gov­ern­ment’s record when it comes to tack­ling crime on Sep­tem­ber 9.

“It is very clear that the crime stats are down. Any­body with eyes will see. The num­bers are down, down, down… Num­bers don’t lie,” she said.

Of­fi­cial an­nu­al fig­ures showed mur­ders falling from 626 in 2024 to 369 in 2025, a re­duc­tion of 41.1 per cent. Dur­ing the PNM’s 105-cal­en­dar-day SoE, po­lice com­pared the same pe­ri­od a year ear­li­er and re­port­ed homi­cides falling from 160 to 113, or 29.4 per cent.

No cur­rent and equal­ly de­tailed TTPS com­par­i­son was lo­cat­ed for the present SoE. The in­de­pen­dent Crime Hotspots track­er count­ed 198 mur­ders dur­ing its first 192 days, com­pared with 213 dur­ing the same dates in 2025. That is a sev­en per cent de­cline. It record­ed 265 mur­ders for 2026 up to Sep­tem­ber 11.

Crime Hotspots builds its count from news re­ports. Its to­tal of 403 mur­ders for 2025 dif­fers from the of­fi­cial to­tal of 369. Its fig­ures show di­rec­tion, but it is not a sub­sti­tute for the po­lice data­base.

Crim­i­nol­o­gist Dr Randy Seep­er­sad said the SoE pro­duced vis­i­ble re­sults, but in­creased pa­trols, de­ter­rence and quick­er po­lice de­ploy­ment may al­so have re­duced street vi­o­lence. He said crimes such as do­mes­tic vi­o­lence and abuse in­side homes are not ad­dressed by the same tac­tics.

“The State of Emer­gency is ef­fec­tive up to a point, and it achieves vis­i­ble re­sults up to a point in a way that at least helps you to man­age your crime sit­u­a­tion. But the thing that I’ve al­ways main­tained is that the State of Emer­gency, in a sense, cov­ers a wound, but doesn’t re­al­ly let the wound heal. So it’s like a ban­dage on a par­tic­u­lar prob­lem.”

Seep­er­sad said in­tel­li­gence-led de­ten­tion al­so car­ries a risk.

“I’m not say­ing we will be 100 per cent right all of the time and there­in, of course, lies an eth­i­cal is­sue be­cause it’s pos­si­ble that you could de­tain some­body who is sus­pect­ed of be­ing in­volved in crim­i­nal of­fend­ing but who hasn’t ac­tu­al­ly en­gaged in any crim­i­nal of­fend­ing at all.”

He cred­it­ed work by the Min­istry of Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty, UWI, psy­chol­o­gists, so­cial work­ers and the Par­ent Teacher As­so­ci­a­tion to reach fam­i­lies and young peo­ple at risk. He said a prop­er as­sess­ment should al­so test hos­pi­tal ad­mis­sions, fear of crime, trust in the po­lice and pub­lic co­op­er­a­tion.

“The ob­jec­tive crime da­ta is just one of it. There is al­so the sub­jec­tive side of it. Is fear of crime chang­ing? Is trust and con­fi­dence in the po­lice chang­ing? Is co­op­er­a­tion be­tween of­fi­cers and cit­i­zens chang­ing?”

Econ­o­mist Dr Vanus James said the ef­fect ex­tend­ed be­yond crime op­er­a­tions.

“We’ve sup­pressed po­lit­i­cal ac­tiv­i­ty. We’ve sup­pressed in­di­vid­ual free­doms. But all that has done for you is cre­at­ed a more, let me de­scribe it as a more sub­mis­sive, over-sub­mis­sive pop­u­la­tion,” he said. “Lift­ing the SoE will take that foot off the neck of the so­ci­ety.”

As of Sep­tem­ber 11, the Gov­ern­ment had not an­nounced whether it would seek a fur­ther ex­ten­sion. The present SoE is sched­uled to ex­pire on Sep­tem­ber 17.

In­ter­na­tion­al con­cern

In April, Trinidad and To­ba­go no­ti­fied the Unit­ed Na­tions that the emer­gency reg­u­la­tions sus­pend­ed parts of Ar­ti­cles 9 and 14 of the In­ter­na­tion­al Covenant on Civ­il and Po­lit­i­cal Rights. Those pro­vi­sions cov­er lib­er­ty, pro­tec­tion from ar­bi­trary de­ten­tion, prompt ap­pear­ance be­fore a ju­di­cial of­fi­cer, bail and as­pects of a fair hear­ing.

In June, the In­ter-Amer­i­can Com­mis­sion on Hu­man Rights warned that re­peat­ed emer­gen­cies could nor­malise ex­cep­tion­al pow­ers and weak­en due process. In Ju­ly, the EU-sup­port­ed En­abling and Pro­tect­ing Civ­il So­ci­ety project said in­ac­ces­si­ble de­ten­tion in­for­ma­tion re­strict­ed in­de­pen­dent scruti­ny.

A June coun­try note from the Unit­ed King­dom Home Of­fice es­ti­mat­ed that Trinidad and To­ba­go had more than 180 gangs and about 1,750 gang mem­bers. It de­scribed the TTPS as un­der-equipped and said re­searchers could not find re­ports of gang-re­lat­ed ar­rests lead­ing to con­vic­tions. It then warned that this did not prove there were no con­vic­tions.

Mo­hammed said the fi­nal as­sess­ment should come from a full pub­lic ac­count.

“It is in­cum­bent up­on the Trinidad and To­ba­go Po­lice Ser­vice to tell the pub­lic of Trinidad and To­ba­go in every sin­gle de­tail what gains were made, what gains were achieved un­der this state of emer­gency, giv­ing them a prop­er and more ef­fi­cient grip on crime con­trol in Trinidad and To­ba­go.”