Chester Sam­bra­no

Lead Ed­i­tor - News­gath­er­ing

chester.sam­bra­no@guardian.co.tt

Fifty-five in­di­vid­u­als are cur­rent­ly in cus­tody fol­low­ing the ex­e­cu­tion of Pre­ven­ta­tive De­ten­tion Or­ders (PDOs) against them un­der the State of Emer­gency (SoE) de­clared on Ju­ly 18, 2025.

Deputy Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice, In­tel­li­gence and In­ves­ti­ga­tions, Suzette Mar­tin, re­port­ed yes­ter­day that a to­tal of 95 PDOs had been ap­proved to date. Three peo­ple re­main in cus­tody pend­ing ap­proval of PDOs, while two are in cus­tody await­ing ex­e­cu­tion of their or­ders. Forty in­di­vid­u­als have had PDOs ap­proved against them but not yet ex­e­cut­ed, and nine in­car­cer­at­ed peo­ple had PDOs ap­proved while al­ready serv­ing sen­tences. No files are cur­rent­ly pend­ing with the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice’s ex­ter­nal le­gal team.

Four de­tainees have chal­lenged their de­ten­tions be­fore the SoE Tri­bunal un­der the Pre­ven­ta­tive De­ten­tion Sched­ule of the Emer­gency Pow­ers Reg­u­la­tions, 2025.

The first PDO in force, No. 2 of 2025, was is­sued on Ju­ly 26 to Khal­ifi­ni Kosi, al­so known as “Smithy,” af­fil­i­at­ed with the Shoot­er-Phase 4, La Hor­quet­ta Ras­ta City/7 gang fac­tion. He is cur­rent­ly held at the East­ern Cor­rec­tion­al Re­ha­bil­i­ta­tion Cen­tre.

Po­lice al­so re­port­ed 35 pri­or­i­ty of­fend­ers were ar­rest­ed dur­ing SoE op­er­a­tions over the past 24 hours, out of 57 peo­ple ar­rest­ed over­all. Of­fi­cers car­ried out 71 ex­er­cis­es across the coun­try, in­clud­ing 391 search­es of ve­hi­cles and premis­es, and 43 traf­fic op­er­a­tions that de­tect­ed 262 traf­fic of­fences.

The South-West­ern Di­vi­sion ac­count­ed for the largest num­ber of pri­or­i­ty tar­gets held, with 13, fol­lowed by the In­ter-Agency Task Force with eight, the East­ern Di­vi­sion with six, and Port-of-Spain of­fi­cers with two. The North­ern and Cen­tral Di­vi­sions each record­ed one pri­or­i­ty of­fend­er ar­rest.

One ri­fle was seized dur­ing the re­cent op­er­a­tions, bring­ing the cu­mu­la­tive to­tal of firearms re­cov­ered since the start of the SoE to 111. These in­clude 28 re­volvers, 52 pis­tols, 13 shot­guns and 15 ri­fles.

Since the start of the SoE, po­lice have con­duct­ed 3,678 op­er­a­tions, ar­rest­ed 1,602 peo­ple, and car­ried out 23,432 search­es na­tion­wide.

The SoE was ini­tial­ly de­clared for 15 days but was ex­tend­ed for an ad­di­tion­al three months by Par­lia­ment on Ju­ly 28, 2025, due to on­go­ing threats from crim­i­nal net­works. Of­fi­cers con­tin­ue to im­ple­ment and mon­i­tor PDOs un­der Reg­u­la­tion 14 of the Emer­gency Pow­ers Reg­u­la­tions, 2025.