Cit­i­zens awoke yes­ter­day to news that there was an­oth­er raid at the Max­i­mum Se­cu­ri­ty Prison overnight, as Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice Al­lis­ter Gue­var­ro con­tin­ues to lead ef­forts aimed at root­ing out the crim­i­nal el­e­ment op­er­at­ing there.

In ad­vo­cat­ing for the re­cent­ly an­nounced State of Emer­gency (SoE), Com­mis­sion­er Gue­var­ro claimed that there was a se­ri­ous na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty threat posed by a high­ly or­gan­ised crim­i­nal syn­di­cate op­er­at­ing both in­side and out­side of the prison sys­tem.

This led to the trans­fer of cer­tain dan­ger­ous crim­i­nals from the Max­i­mum Se­cu­ri­ty Prison in Arou­ca to mil­i­tary fa­cil­i­ties in Ch­aguara­mas, where they are now housed un­der army con­trol.

How­ev­er, the dis­cov­ery of con­tra­band and com­mu­ni­ca­tion dur­ing Tues­day’s raid at the prison is deeply trou­bling, since it not on­ly points to a new plot tar­get­ing law en­force­ment of­fi­cials but is al­so an in­di­ca­tion that our pris­ons re­main quite pen­e­tra­tive, even though the main gang­sters who sparked this lat­est SoE de­c­la­ra­tion were re­moved from the prison sys­tem.

It begs the ques­tion of whether a thor­ough se­cu­ri­ty sweep of the pris­ons was done at the time of the SoE de­c­la­ra­tion last Fri­day (Ju­ly 18), and if so, why did it not neu­tralise any fur­ther se­cu­ri­ty threat at such a se­cure lo­ca­tion?

Clear­ly, there seem to be some loop­holes in the ap­proach which re­quire ad­just­ment.

In the­o­ry, with the top gang lead­ers moved to an en­vi­ron­ment where they are un­able to ac­cess com­mu­ni­ca­tion to co­or­di­nate ac­tiv­i­ty on the out­side, law en­force­ment should be able to gain the up­per hand.

But alas, this is not cur­rent­ly the case.

With that said, we praise CoP Gue­var­ro for his brave an­ti-crime ef­forts to date, since count­less oth­ers aimed at root­ing out con­tin­ued il­le­gal ac­tiv­i­ty by those be­hind bars, in­clud­ing the last SoE, which was al­so sparked by sim­i­lar es­ca­lat­ed gang ac­tiv­i­ty, brought lit­tle to no re­al re­lief.

Gue­var­ro’s com­mit­ment to lead­ing his troops from the front, as seen in the lat­est res­cue of kid­nap vic­tim Jankie Satie Karim, with a fa­tal end­ing for two of the per­pe­tra­tors, is al­so com­mend­able, since the pub­lic is des­per­ate­ly crav­ing an end to the crime scourge by any le­gal means nec­es­sary.

In­deed, what the pub­lic needs now is more ac­tion and less rhetoric. The lat­est kid­nap­ping in­volv­ing two men, who luck­i­ly es­caped their ab­duc­tors, is a sign that the crim­i­nal el­e­ment is still op­er­at­ing as they are ac­cus­tomed to, even un­der the SoE.

In this re­gard, the sup­port of Min­is­ter of Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty Roger Alexan­der is crit­i­cal to what CoP Gue­var­ro is hop­ing to achieve. Alexan­der was known for his hard-knock ap­proach as a po­lice of­fi­cer and can bring this ex­pe­ri­ence to the ta­ble in pro­vid­ing the re­sources the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice and De­fence Force need, as well as the leg­is­la­tion re­quired.

As such, we hope that both Min­is­ter Alexan­der and CoP Gue­var­ro push on with mean­ing­ful ini­tia­tives un­til the ul­ti­mate goal is achieved. 

Need­less to say, while a cur­few is not cur­rent­ly en­forced in the on­go­ing SoE, the au­thor­i­ties may well need to re­vis­it this, since it is clear the crim­i­nal el­e­ment re­mains un­fazed by the ex­ist­ing wave of law en­force­ment ac­tiv­i­ty.