An­na-Lisa Paul

Se­nior Re­porter

an­na-lisa.paul@guardian.co.tt

Al­though a State of Emer­gency (SoE) re­mains in ef­fect for T&T and the au­thor­i­ties have record­ed a 20 per cent de­cline in homi­cides so far this year in com­par­i­son to last year, mem­bers of the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice (TTPS) top brass are still con­cerned about the coun­try’s mur­der rate.

The lat­est in­ci­dent at 12.48 pm yes­ter­day, claimed the life of Bel­mont res­i­dent Mar­vin Phillip.

Phillip, 33, of Vin­cent Brown Street, Gon­za­les, was re­port­ed­ly shot by un­known gun­men near his home.

Guardian Me­dia was told Phillip, who ini­tial­ly lived in Diego Mar­tin, re­lo­cat­ed to Bel­mont last year fol­low­ing an at­tempt on his life.

It was al­leged that gun­men am­bushed Phillip in the area known as 1,000 Steps yes­ter­day and opened fire on him.

Po­lice re­port­ed­ly held a sus­pect short­ly af­ter in the Bel­mont dis­trict and al­leged­ly re­cov­ered a firearm.

Phillip’s killing took the toll to 45 for the year in com­par­i­son to 63 at the same stage last year.

Ex­tend­ing con­do­lences to Phillip’s fam­i­ly as he ad­dressed re­porters at the Port-of-Spain CID, Sackville Street, Port-of-Spain, yes­ter­day, act­ing Deputy Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice (DCP), Op­er­a­tions, Curt Si­mon said, “The SoE is in fact hav­ing an im­pact on vi­o­lent crime.”

Ex­am­in­ing the sta­tis­tics dai­ly, he claimed, “Vi­o­lent crime it­self has re­duced by about 47 per cent. There is a re­duc­tion in the mur­ders around 20 per cent there­abouts. We are not sat­is­fied with that re­duc­tion, as we think it should be low­er and even right now, we are re­strate­gis­ing in terms of how we are re­al­ly go­ing to make ad­di­tion­al use of the SoE, even in the midst of this Car­ni­val sea­son.”

The act­ing DCP said a to­tal of 23 de­ten­tion or­ders have so far been is­sued for per­sons who have been ar­rest­ed, and even for per­sons not yet in cus­tody.

He added, “We ex­pect two more by the end of the day.”

Re­vis­it­ing the is­sue of just how the SoE reg­u­la­tions al­low law­men to se­cure Pre­ven­ta­tive De­ten­tion Or­ders for per­sons of in­ter­est who have not been ap­pre­hend­ed, Si­mon moved to clear up the mis­con­cep­tion that de­ten­tion or­ders can­not be tak­en out for per­sons un­less they were in cus­tody.

He ex­plained that cer­tain cir­cum­stances al­lowed the po­lice to ap­ply for the de­ten­tion or­ders.

“We have our pri­or­i­ty list­ing for of­fend­ers whom we deem are per­sons who would cause some sort of may­hem to the pub­lic and even to the na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty as a whole, and it is these per­sons that we are tar­get­ing.”

He said once these in­ves­ti­ga­tions are car­ried out, of­fi­cers seek the ad­vice of the TTPS le­gal of­fi­cers, who, in turn, ap­proach the Min­is­ter of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty to se­cure his sig­na­ture, fol­low­ing which the or­ders are hand­ed to the po­lice so they can act. He said these or­ders ef­fec­tive­ly act as a war­rant.

Mean­while, he said the po­lice have since re­vised how they op­er­ate re­gard­ing or­ders for per­sons not yet in cus­tody, as pub­lic in­for­ma­tion can warn some of them who can take steps to evade po­lice.

“We be­lieve it should re­main on an in­tel­li­gence lev­el so we have made cer­tain re­quests to make sure it re­mains that way,” he said.

Yes­ter­day’s week­ly me­dia brief­ing at the Po­lice Ad­min­is­tra­tion Build­ing, Port-of-Spain, had to be abort­ed soon af­ter it be­gan, af­ter a fire alarm was trig­gered by on­go­ing re­pair works.

The Fire Ser­vice was sum­moned and fol­low­ing a thor­ough check, per­sons were al­lowed to re-en­ter af­ter an hour-long de­lay.

How­ev­er, the TTPS top brass opt­ed to move the brief­ing to the Port-of-Spain CID of­fices on Sackville Street, where they field­ed ques­tions from the me­dia.