Shane Su­perville

Se­nior Re­porter

shane.su­perville@guardian.co.tt

Po­lice in­ves­ti­ga­tors in­ter­viewed sev­er­al gang mem­bers who were ar­rest­ed dur­ing a se­ries of raids and search­es that be­gan ear­ly on Thurs­day morn­ing.

The ex­er­cis­es, which in­volved var­i­ous tac­ti­cal and in­ves­tiga­tive po­lice units, re­sult­ed in the ar­rest of 15 gang mem­bers from three ma­jor gangs.

How­ev­er, sources said that as of yes­ter­day af­ter­noon, the num­ber of sus­pects in cus­tody had de­creased, as an undis­closed num­ber of sus­pects were re­leased pend­ing fur­ther en­quiries.

De­spite this, po­lice said most of the sus­pects re­mained in cus­tody at dif­fer­ent po­lice sta­tions across Trinidad.

One of­fi­cer said the gang mem­bers were not on­ly ques­tioned about mur­ders and shoot­ings but al­so a se­ries of home in­va­sions across Trinidad.

“We have found that one of the gangs who we tar­get­ed have set up a net­work of home in­va­sions us­ing peo­ple to go to dif­fer­ent com­mu­ni­ties. These would be com­mu­ni­ties out­side of the gang’s strong­holds where they would at­tack res­i­dents,” one of­fi­cer said.

An­oth­er po­lice source said of­fi­cers were ex­pect­ed to de­cide which sus­pects would be charged by last evening.

In ad­di­tion to the in­ter­views, sev­er­al sus­pects were al­so placed on iden­ti­fi­ca­tion pa­rades.

In a me­dia re­lease yes­ter­day morn­ing, Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Er­la Hare­wood-Christo­pher con­firmed that the sus­pects were ar­rest­ed dur­ing the joint op­er­a­tion.

In the re­lease, Hare­wood-Christo­pher al­so re­spond­ed to the mur­der of two men at St Paul Street, Port-of-Spain, yes­ter­day morn­ing, where she not­ed the po­lice would con­tin­ue their ex­er­cis­es to root out crim­i­nal­i­ty and pro­tect cit­i­zens.

The ex­er­cis­es were sanc­tioned by Hare­wood-Christo­pher and led by DCP Curt Si­mon, with sup­port from ACP Crime Kent Ghisyawan and ACP Tac­ti­cal Sup­port Kelvern Thomp­son.

The units in­volved in the ar­rests of the sus­pects were the In­ter-Agency Task Force (IATF), the Guard and Emer­gency Branch (GEB), the Bel­mont and Besson Street po­lice sta­tions and the Ca­nine Unit.