Twen­ty-two peo­ple round­ed up by po­lice dur­ing a na­tion­wide an­ti-crime po­lice op­er­a­tion re­mained in cus­tody last evening. The sus­pects were held in con­nec­tion with gang-re­lat­ed ac­tiv­i­ties.

The ex­er­cis­es be­gan on Tues­day (June 11) and were part of Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Er­la Hare­wood-Christo­pher’s vi­o­lent crime re­duc­tion plan which was launched last year.

Se­nior po­lice sources said those held dur­ing the ex­er­cis­es, among them one woman, were as­sist­ing them with their in­ves­ti­ga­tions. The al­leged gang­sters were be­ing housed at sev­er­al po­lice sta­tions across the North­ern Di­vi­sion.

Po­lice said mem­bers of three gangs—name­ly Re­sis­tance, Sixx and Sev­en—were among the 22 ar­rest­ed.

The TTPS is­sued a me­dia re­lease yes­ter­day say­ing four men were held from the North-East­ern and Port-of-Spain di­vi­sions in two sep­a­rate ex­er­cis­es.

The first ex­er­cise was con­duct­ed by of­fi­cers of the In­ter-Agency Task Force and Gang and In­tel­li­gence Unit on Tues­day be­tween 11 am and 4 pm.

Dur­ing that ex­er­cise, three men, be­tween the ages of 20 to 26, all of Mor­vant, were ar­rest­ed.

The sec­ond ex­er­cise took place on Wednes­day be­tween 2 am and 5.30 am in Barataria, where a 44-year-old Mor­vant man was held by of­fi­cers of the Barataria Crim­i­nal In­ves­ti­ga­tions De­part­ment, Port-of-Spain Gang Unit and the In­ter-Agency Task Force.

It said an­oth­er sev­en men were held in the Tu­na­puna and St Au­gus­tine ar­eas on Tues­day night.

Some of these men were fea­tured in YouTube videos bran­dish­ing what ap­peared to be guns.

Po­lice said yes­ter­day that part of CoP Hare­wood-Christo­pher’s plan fo­cused on tack­ling gang vi­o­lence.

As part of that plan, Hare­wood-Christo­pher had said po­lice would al­so op­er­a­tionalise gang in­tel­li­gence units in each di­vi­sion.

She said the most vi­o­lent gang mem­bers in the po­lice data­base would be tar­get­ed by of­fi­cers, par­tic­u­lar­ly those with out­stand­ing war­rants.