Shane Su­perville

Se­nior Re­porter

shane.su­perville@guardian.co.tt

Min­is­ter of Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty Roger Alexan­der is un­able to say whether there will be an­oth­er ex­ten­sion of the on­go­ing State of Emer­gency (SoE), but main­tains much more work needs to be done.

The SoE was de­clared on Ju­ly 18 in re­sponse to a pur­port­ed plot by crim­i­nals to tar­get high-rank­ing of­fi­cials in the ju­di­cia­ry and na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty.

The SoE was orig­i­nal­ly ex­pect­ed to end af­ter 15 days of its de­c­la­ra­tion, but an ex­ten­sion of three months was grant­ed on Ju­ly 28.

The SoE is there­fore ex­pect­ed to end in late Oc­to­ber.

Speak­ing with Guardian Me­dia on Thurs­day, Alexan­der said he could not say for cer­tain whether a sec­ond ex­ten­sion of the SoE was pos­si­ble, but main­tained that law en­force­ment want­ed to achieve more per­ma­nent re­sults in dis­rupt­ing crim­i­nal net­works.

He ac­knowl­edged while there has been sig­nif­i­cant progress in tack­ling or­gan­ised crime, ad­di­tion­al ef­forts would achieve more long-term re­sults.

“If I de­stroy some­thing there’s no com­ing back af­ter that.”

“So we are at the stage where we are look­ing to de­stroy these net­works, not just dis­man­tle.”

“What we are look­ing for now is a more per­ma­nent im­pact on what we have dis­cov­ered with the in­ten­tion of it nev­er re­turn­ing or even the thought of it en­ter­ing a per­son’s head.”

When asked what would be re­quired to achieve a to­tal de­struc­tion of these crim­i­nal groups, Alexan­der said it would in­volve sev­er­al ini­tia­tives work­ing in tan­dem, but did not di­vulge what these ac­tiv­i­ties would in­volve.

He how­ev­er con­firmed that lo­cal au­thor­i­ties were re­ceiv­ing as­sis­tance from for­eign agen­cies as they push for long-term se­cu­ri­ty so­lu­tions.

Re­fer­ring to the evolv­ing trends in smug­gling and traf­fick­ing in the re­gion, Alexan­der said drugs from the South Amer­i­ca weren’t the on­ly items be­ing shipped through T&T, as il­le­gal guns from both the US and South Amer­i­ca were be­ing smug­gled.