Shane Su­perville

Se­nior Re­porter

shane.su­perville@guardian.co.tt

A po­lice ex­er­cise in Pi­ar­co ear­ly yes­ter­day morn­ing re­sult­ed in the ar­rest of sev­en men, in­clud­ing sus­pect­ed gang mem­bers who po­lice be­lieve were “hid­ing out” in the com­mu­ni­ty af­ter re­lo­cat­ing from an­oth­er part of the coun­try.

Ac­cord­ing to a Trinidad and To­ba­go Po­lice Ser­vice (TTPS) me­dia re­lease, of­fi­cers of the North-Cen­tral Di­vi­sion, to­geth­er with the In­ter-Agency Task Force (IATF), the Guard and Emer­gency Branch, and sup­port­ed by sol­diers of the Trinidad and To­ba­go Reg­i­ment, launched the ex­er­cise at Orop­une Gar­dens around 4 am. It con­clud­ed at ap­prox­i­mate­ly 6.45 am.

Sev­en men were ar­rest­ed on Pre­ven­ta­tive De­ten­tion Or­ders (PDOs).

The TTPS said the ex­er­cise was in­tel­li­gence-led and forms part of on­go­ing ef­forts to curb crim­i­nal ac­tiv­i­ty in the North­ern Di­vi­sion.

Sources told Guardian Me­dia that among those de­tained were sus­pect­ed mem­bers of a Mus­lim gang. The sources said of­fi­cers from the Spe­cial In­ves­ti­ga­tions Unit (SIU), which fo­cus­es on or­gan­ised crime net­works, al­so par­tic­i­pat­ed in the op­er­a­tion.

One source said some of those ar­rest­ed were orig­i­nal­ly from East Port-of-Spain but had been stay­ing in Orop­une Gar­dens.

“They’re part of the same gang, but they op­er­ate in dif­fer­ent ar­eas. Those are guys from Port-of-Spain who have fam­i­ly there and stay there at times,” the source said.

An­oth­er source sug­gest­ed the men may have been re­sid­ing in the area af­ter al­leged­ly com­mit­ting of­fences in and around the Port-of-Spain Di­vi­sion, in an at­tempt to evade law en­force­ment.

The in­ves­ti­ga­tion is con­tin­u­ing.