T&T has record­ed eight mur­ders and law en­force­ment of­fi­cials have seized some 12,019 rounds of as­sort­ed am­mu­ni­tion and 78 firearms since the state of emer­gency be­gan on Au­gust 22. As­sis­tant Su­per­in­ten­dent of Po­lice Joanne Archie made the an­nounce­ment yes­ter­day at a me­dia brief­ing at the Po­lice Ad­min­is­tra­tion Build­ing, Port-of-Spain. Archie said Cen­tral Di­vi­sion record­ed five homi­cides, East­ern Di­vi­sion one, North­ern Di­vi­sion one and To­ba­go one. She added: "One of those mur­ders was sent for in­quest and 15 peo­ple were de­tained for mur­ders. "Eleven of those peo­ple were re­leased, two were charged and one is still be­ing de­tained."

To date 1,707 peo­ple have been ar­rest­ed, out of which 438 peo­ple were de­tained for gang-re­lat­ed of­fences, Archie said. She said 318 peo­ple were ar­rest­ed for drug of­fences, 398 peo­ple de­tained for se­ri­ous of­fences, 37 peo­ple de­tained for homi­cide in­ves­ti­ga­tions, 100 peo­ple ar­rest­ed for breach of cur­few and 351 ar­rest­ed for out­stand­ing war­rants. Six­ty-five peo­ple were picked up by po­lice for in­quiries while law­men net­ted 353 peo­ple for traf­fic of­fences. Archie said the lat­est sta­tis­tics com­piled by the po­lice, from Sep­tem­ber 8, 2011 to Sep­tem­ber 9, 2011, re­vealed there were 110 peo­ple ar­rest­ed dur­ing that pe­ri­od for the fol­low­ing of­fences:

• Gang-re­lat­ed: One;

• homi­cide: One;

• drug of­fences: 31;

• breach of cur­few: nil;

• firearms-re­lat­ed: nil;

• se­ri­ous of­fences: 41;

• out­stand­ing war­rants: 11; and

• en­quiries: 25

Archie was in­tro­duced to the me­dia by Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Dwayne Gibbs who said she would be or­gan­is­ing all po­lice me­dia con­fer­ences. Af­ter mak­ing the an­nounce­ment Gibbs left with­out tak­ing any ques­tions or mak­ing any state­ments re­gard­ing the state of emer­gency. On claims that the po­lice were de­tain­ing peo­ple with­out telling them the rea­son for their de­ten­tion, Archie said the po­lice must im­me­di­ate­ly give a rea­son be­fore ar­rest­ing some­one.