Shane Su­perville

Se­nior Re­porter

shane.su­perville@guardian.co.tt

The at­tor­ney for Port-of-Spain res­i­dent Calvin Lee, alias Tyson, de­scribed by po­lice as a pri­or­i­ty of­fend­er, says she in­tends to write Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Er­la Hare­wood-Christo­pher over con­cerns about his de­ten­tion.

Se­nior Coun­sel Pamela El­der is ques­tion­ing the le­gal­i­ty of Lee be­ing placed un­der house ar­rest.

Lee was re­leased with­out any charges be­ing laid against him on Sun­day, af­ter spend­ing al­most a week in cus­tody.

Ear­li­er this week, ACP Ad­min­is­tra­tion Richard Smith con­firmed Lee was be­ing kept un­der house ar­rest.

Last year, Lee was charged with firearm-re­lat­ed of­fences and has been ques­tioned in re­la­tion to ex­tor­tion and shoot­ing of­fences.

Dur­ing a TTPS me­dia brief­ing yes­ter­day at the Po­lice Ad­min­is­tra­tion Build­ing in Port-of-Spain, Smith clar­i­fied that un­like house ar­rests through the Ad­min­is­tra­tion of Jus­tice (Elec­tron­ic Mon­i­tor­ing) Act 2020, the cur­rent arrange­ments for house ar­rest were au­tho­rised by the Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice un­der the Emer­gency Pow­ers Reg­u­la­tions 4 (i) (c) in­stead of the courts.

He added peo­ple placed un­der house ar­rest dur­ing this pe­ri­od would not be mon­i­tored us­ing elec­tron­ic mon­i­tor­ing bracelets, but rather through sur­veil­lance and rou­tine checks from po­lice.

Re­spond­ing to Guardian Me­dia’s ques­tions via What­sApp yes­ter­day, El­der said the pro­vi­sions of the or­der were “too wide, op­pres­sive and un­work­able,” as it per­tains to her client. She de­clined to com­ment fur­ther on the mat­ter.

Smith said the Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice could keep some­one un­der house ar­rest for as long as she be­lieved en­quiries need­ed to con­tin­ue.

He added that a per­son could al­so re­main un­der house ar­rest if there was a sus­pi­cion that they were a threat to the pub­lic and the per­son could be de­tained for up to three months once ap­proval was giv­en from the Min­is­ter of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty.

Smith ex­plained on these mat­ters, the min­is­ter is ad­vised by a team of at­tor­neys on whether the ap­pli­ca­tion for con­tin­ued de­ten­tion is grant­ed or de­nied.

He said dif­fer­ent “sys­tems” were be­ing put in place as po­lice con­tin­ued their in­ves­ti­ga­tion of sus­pect­ed gang mem­bers.

Speak­ing af­ter the me­dia brief­ing, Smith ex­plained that by na­ture, in­ves­ti­ga­tions in­to gang ac­tiv­i­ties would re­quire time giv­en the vol­ume of in­for­ma­tion ob­tained by po­lice from gang mem­bers and as­so­ciates, which would re­quire po­lice to keep mon­i­tor­ing such high-pro­file sus­pects once they re­ceived enough ev­i­dence.

Smith added that while there were no elec­tron­ic mon­i­tor­ing de­vices avail­able to en­sure Lee re­mained con­fined to his home, he said that mon­i­tor­ing from po­lice and tech­nol­o­gy would be suf­fi­cient.

“We have mon­i­tor­ing sys­tems to mon­i­tor him but that’s as much as I can say.”

He said that while Lee was the on­ly per­son held un­der house ar­rest thus far, oth­er sus­pects re­mained in cus­tody as there was no need to place them un­der sim­i­lar de­ten­tion at home for now.

One of­fi­cer said that while Lee was re­leased with­out any charges be­ing laid, the Emer­gency Reg­u­la­tions Pow­ers grant­ed of­fi­cers the au­thor­i­ty to en­ter homes and con­duct search­es on sus­pi­cion, but was not a sub­sti­tute for ev­i­dence need­ed to lay crim­i­nal charges.

“They (the SoE reg­u­la­tions) give the po­lice more pow­er to act more quick­ly but you still have to prove what you need to in or­der to make a charge.”