Shane Su­perville

Se­nior Re­porter

shane.su­perville@guardian.co.tt

Al­most a week af­ter a to­tal of 18 peo­ple were ar­rest­ed as part of in­ves­ti­ga­tions in­to sev­er­al gang-re­lat­ed shoot­ings and mur­ders in and around Port-of-Spain, po­lice of­fi­cers charged sev­en and re­leased the re­main­ing 11.

Fif­teen sus­pects, which in­clud­ed the re­put­ed leader of a high-pro­file gang, were ar­rest­ed in sev­er­al ear­ly morn­ing raids last Thurs­day morn­ing, while more were de­tained be­tween Thurs­day evening and Fri­day morn­ing, in re­sponse to a gang war in east Port-of-Spain.

In­ves­ti­ga­tors con­firmed that the man be­lieved to be the leader of the gang was re­leased with­out charges be­ing laid on Sun­day.

Sev­en of the men who were be­ing held at the St Joseph Po­lice Sta­tion were charged with loi­ter­ing and grant­ed sta­tion bail yes­ter­day.

Po­lice al­so con­firmed that an­oth­er group of men de­tained dur­ing the sweep and kept at the Besson Street Po­lice Sta­tion were al­so re­leased pend­ing fur­ther en­quiries.

One po­lice source said that even if sus­pects were not charged, it did not mean the ex­er­cis­es were un­suc­cess­ful, as in­for­ma­tion gath­ered from in­ter­views can be used in fu­ture in­ves­ti­ga­tions.

He added that doc­u­ment­ing the names, alias­es, ad­dress­es and pho­tographs of the sus­pects can al­so be help­ful in com­pil­ing in­for­ma­tion in­to the gang data­base.

“It’s not a fail­ure be­cause re­gard­less of whether they were charged or not, it helps us go­ing for­ward in learn­ing more about who these peo­ple are, where we can find them and who they are af­fil­i­at­ed with,” one of­fi­cer said.

The raids were con­duct­ed by of­fi­cers from the In­ter-Agency Task Force, the Guard and Emer­gency Branch, the Bel­mont Po­lice Sta­tion, the Besson Street Po­lice Sta­tion, the Ca­nine Unit and the Reg­i­ment.