Se­nior po­lice of­fi­cers in the East­ern Di­vi­sion have so far ap­plied for 36 Pre­ven­tive De­ten­tion Or­ders (PDOs) as the State of Emer­gency (SoE) con­tin­ues.

Of those ap­pli­ca­tions, 28 have been grant­ed, with of­fi­cers ex­e­cut­ing 25 of the or­ders. Four of the de­tained in­di­vid­u­als have since been charged with firearm-re­lat­ed of­fences.

Po­lice said the ma­jor­i­ty of the PDOs were ob­tained on the ba­sis that the in­di­vid­u­als posed a threat to pub­lic safe­ty.

Speak­ing at yes­ter­day’s me­dia brief­ing at the Po­lice Ad­min­is­tra­tion Build­ing in Port-of-Spain, Se­nior Su­per­in­ten­dent Bernard Eti­enne ac­knowl­edged a slight in­crease in break-ins in the Rio Claro dis­trict.

He ex­pressed op­ti­mism that the trend would be re­versed fol­low­ing the re­cent ar­rest of three sus­pects, not­ing that po­lice had record­ed 46 break-ins in 2025 com­pared with 49 so far this year.

“We would have recog­nised that there would have been an in­crease in sac­ri­lege break-ins. Places of di­vine wor­ship. Church­es have been bro­ken in­to,” Eti­enne said.

He al­so ex­pressed con­fi­dence that re­ports of sim­i­lar break-ins at sev­er­al beach­front prop­er­ties in Ma­yaro would de­cline fol­low­ing the ar­rest of an­oth­er three sus­pects.

The East­ern Di­vi­sion has al­so record­ed nine home in­va­sions since the start of the year. Eti­enne said sev­er­al sus­pects had been ar­rest­ed and stolen items re­cov­ered.

He urged home­own­ers and busi­ness op­er­a­tors to re­main vig­i­lant by en­sur­ing doors and win­dows are se­cured at all times, in­stalling out­door light­ing and CCTV cam­eras where pos­si­ble, re­port­ing sus­pi­cious peo­ple and ve­hi­cles, avoid­ing post­ing trav­el plans on­line, and ex­er­cis­ing cau­tion when open­ing doors to cus­tomers and vis­i­tors.

Em­pha­sis­ing the im­por­tance of pub­lic sup­port, Eti­enne said po­lice in­tend­ed to in­crease the num­ber of town hall and sta­tion coun­cil meet­ings to strength­en part­ner­ships, build trust and im­prove com­mu­ni­ty re­la­tions.