Min­is­ter of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Mar­vin Gon­za­les says the State of Emer­gency (SoE) was a “suc­cess,” as he re­vealed 14 peo­ple were charged as it came to an end at mid­night Sun­day.

While he was un­able to pro­vide any spe­cif­ic de­tails on who was charged or what charges un­der the An­ti-Gang leg­is­la­tion were laid, Gon­za­les said de­tainees were fac­ing sev­er­al of­fences. The 14 were among 53 peo­ple held in con­nec­tion with sus­pect­ed gang ac­tiv­i­ty dur­ing the SoE. Thir­ty-nine of them were re­leased from the Max­i­mum Se­cu­ri­ty Prison and the East­ern Cor­rec­tion­al Re­ha­bil­i­ta­tion Cen­tre hours be­fore the SoE came to and.

The SoE was de­clared on De­cem­ber 30, 2024, in a bid to quell a se­ries of gang-re­lat­ed mur­ders and shoot­ings in and around Port-of-Spain at the time.

On De­cem­ber 28, 2024, Trevor Williams, 34, was gunned down when he and an­oth­er man—iden­ti­fied as a re­put­ed un­der­world fig­ure—were shot at by gun­men out­side the Besson Street Po­lice Sta­tion.

A day lat­er, five men, Kam­bon Omowale, Cleon St John, Der­ron Cal­iste, Gareth Smith and Ryan Lessey, were killed out­side a par­lour on Priz­gar Lands Cir­cu­lar, Laven­tille, in what po­lice sus­pect was a reprisal killing.

The SoE was orig­i­nal­ly ex­pect­ed to end on March 30 but was ex­tend­ed to end on April 14, with no ob­jec­tions from the Op­po­si­tion, dur­ing a sit­ting of the Low­er House in Jan­u­ary.

Since the de­c­la­ra­tion of the SoE, 53 peo­ple were placed in pre­ven­ta­tive de­ten­tion, as they were de­scribed as be­ing in­volved in “ac­tiv­i­ties prej­u­di­cial to pub­lic safe­ty.”

Con­tact­ed for com­ment yes­ter­day, Gon­za­les said he could not say for cer­tain whether the 14 peo­ple charged were tak­en to court yes­ter­day but was con­fi­dent the SoE was ben­e­fi­cial to se­cur­ing the coun­try, cit­ing a 30 per cent drop in mur­der and oth­er cat­e­gories of se­ri­ous crimes.

As of yes­ter­day morn­ing, there were 112 mur­ders com­pared to 160 for the same cor­re­spond­ing pe­ri­od in 2025. There have been 14 mur­ders for the month of April thus far, com­pared to 19 mur­ders for the same pe­ri­od last year. Da­ta from the po­lice Crime and Prob­lem Analy­sis (CA­PA) branch re­port­ed that be­tween Jan­u­ary 1 to Feb­ru­ary 20, there were four dou­ble mur­ders, com­pared to the same pe­ri­od in 2024 where there were three dou­ble mur­ders and one triple mur­der.

Gon­za­les said the SoE al­lowed po­lice to “op­er­ate strate­gi­cal­ly,” not­ing the op­er­a­tions were done with­out a cur­few in ef­fect.

“The ar­rest and pros­e­cu­tion of per­sons in­volved in gang ac­tiv­i­ties is some­thing we have not been see­ing out­side of the State of Emer­gency so in that re­gard yes, it has been a suc­cess,” he said.

“There have been a lot of op­er­a­tions with­in the pris­ons as well which led to the seizure of firearms and oth­er con­tra­band, so I would say it has been a suc­cess.”

Act­ing Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Ju­nior Ben­jamin al­so said he felt the SoE yield­ed crime-fight­ing suc­cess, adding he was aware of at least 11 de­tainees charged be­fore it end­ed on Sun­day.

But even with the end of the SoE, Ben­jamin main­tained the po­lice are de­ter­mined to main­tain a vis­i­ble pres­ence across the coun­try to en­sure crime con­tin­ued to trend down­wards.

“We an­tic­i­pate now that the SoE is over, peo­ple will want to test the fab­ric of the po­lice and we are pre­pared and have put the nec­es­sary strate­gies in place to deal with that,” Ben­jamin said.

“We want to send a mes­sage to those peo­ple who are think­ing of test­ing the po­lice, that we will be out and we will be tak­ing a ze­ro-tol­er­ance ap­proach. So we are ask­ing per­sons to stay with­in the law and we will do what we have to do with­in the law and serve the pub­lic.”

Con­tact­ed for com­ment yes­ter­day, de­fence at­tor­ney Criston J Williams said one of his clients, who was de­tained dur­ing the SoE, was fired from his job as a re­sult of the de­ten­tion, not­ing that le­gal ac­tion may be forth­com­ing.