Gail Alexan­der

Se­nior Po­lit­i­cal Re­porter

Po­lice op­er­a­tions were un­der­way fol­low­ing Gov­ern­ment's an­nounce­ment of a State of Emer­gency yes­ter­day.

Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Fitzger­ald Hinds in­di­cat­ed this at yes­ter­day's me­dia brief­ing at the Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­istry on the SoE.

Hinds not­ed state­ments by act­ing At­tor­ney Gen­er­al Sturt Young on the week­end mur­ders that trig­gered the SoE, in­clud­ing the shoot­ing out­side the Besson Street Po­lice Sta­tion that tar­get­ed a known crim­i­nal of­fend­er, a do­mes­tic in­ci­dent, one in the East­ern Di­vi­sion (mo­tive un­known) and five in an in­ci­dent at Priz­gar Lands, Laven­tille. That brought to nine the num­ber over the 48-hour pe­ri­od,

He said the TTPS' clas­si­fi­ca­tion of re­cent mur­ders were that they were gang re­lat­ed.

He added,”So this es­ca­la­tion over the last 48 hours fol­lows 15 homi­cides dur­ing the four days that pre­ced­ed it from Mon­day, De­cem­ber 23 to Thurs­day, De­cem­ber 26. The TTPS are in­ter­pret­ing this as a vir­tu­al out­break of gang vi­o­lence trau­ma­tis­ing the en­tire so­ci­ety."

He gave sta­tis­tics at De­cem­ber 26th: 551 in­ci­dents with 614 fa­tal­i­ties from this.

“Nine­ty-three of which were in­ci­dents with more than one vic­tim. In that pe­ri­od there were 33 dou­ble homi­cides, eight triple homi­cides, four quadru­ple homi­cide and one quin­tu­ple homi­cide. In ad­di­tion to mur­ders, there were 616 in­ci­dents of wound­ings and shoot­ing in­volv­ing 713 vic­tims. But the vic­tims didn’t die and those. There's no doubt that we’re deal­ing with an epi­dem­ic – this is why we’re treat­ing this as a pub­lic health con­cern.”

Among sta­tis­tics on the mur­ders, he said rob­beries ac­count­ed for 60, re­venge, 55, drugs, 84, while al­ter­ca­tions and gangs ac­count­ed for 263.

Hinds said the SoE was a wel­come and very nec­es­sary and use­ful de­vel­op­ment.

“It will give the TTPS, sup­port­ed by the T&T De­fence Force, the lever­age to fight back against these trends on cit­i­zens' be­half ... This de­c­la­ra­tion is to con­front the crim­i­nals and al­low law en­force­ment eas­i­er ac­cess than or­di­nary to them in light of the crises that they’ve pre­sent­ed to T&T,” he said.

Hinds not­ed the case of the two teens who found a gun in a clothes bas­ket and one lost his life. He said to date, no one was able to iden­ti­fy who made it avail­able to the young­sters. He al­so re­called a cul­prit on a Mor­vant rooftop one Old Year's night who fired down ac­ci­den­tal­ly and a four-year-old was killed but the gun wasn't found or the per­pe­tra­tor iden­ti­fied

Hinds, who quot­ed the Prime Min­is­ter's re­cent state­ment on the crime sit­u­a­tion, said the SoE de­ci­sion showed Gov­ern­ment re­mains deeply con­cerned about the cir­cum­stances fac­ing the pub­lic and was call­ing on every­one to do their part.

"It's not about De No­bri­ga or Hinds or Mo­hammed alone, it's about all of us," he said, adding he was hap­py that Arch­bish­op Ja­son Gor­don re­cent­ly en­dorsed the pub­lic health ap­proach on se­cu­ri­ty is­sues which was start­ed by Gov­ern­ment

Hinds said there will be some lev­el of in­con­ve­nience in the SoE "but it's for the greater good..."