Gail Alexan­der

Se­nior Po­lit­i­cal Re­porter

Teteron Bar­racks, where “the prob­lem­at­ic prison in­mates” from the Max­i­mum Se­cu­ri­ty Prison were moved to at the start of the State of Emer­gency (SoE), was very re­cent­ly in­fil­trat­ed by two drones. How­ev­er, At­tor­ney Gen­er­al John Je­re­mie said the De­fence Force dealt with that threat.

And per­sons in crit­i­cal po­si­tions who were tar­get­ed for as­sas­si­na­tion have been giv­en some of that in­for­ma­tion.

“I’ve been cleared to say that the lo­ca­tions that the prob­lem­at­ic in­mates were re­moved to very re­cent­ly, were al­so in­fil­trat­ed by two drones. That’s what I’ve been per­mit­ted to say. The De­fence Force, which has cus­tody of those ar­eas, dealt with that sit­u­a­tion,” Je­re­mie said dur­ing yes­ter­day’s Par­lia­ment de­bate on a mo­tion to ex­tend the SoE by three months.

The mo­tion was even­tu­al­ly passed with unan­i­mous Gov­ern­ment and Op­po­si­tion sup­port. The SoE will now end in Oc­to­ber.

Je­re­mie, who said 35 years ago the Gov­ern­ment was over­thrown “in this very cham­ber,” not­ed he was ad­dress­ing the House and T&T “... in cir­cum­stances not dis­sim­i­lar from those at that time.”

He added, “One dif­fer­ence, and a ter­ri­fy­ing one at that, is that to­day there is not a sin­gu­lar vi­o­lent threat but I want to be abun­dant­ly clear: if we didn’t take the de­ci­sive ac­tion of de­clar­ing an SoE and im­me­di­ate­ly re­mov­ing in­di­vid­u­als from the Max­i­mum Se­cu­ri­ty Prison 10 days ago, along with the many sub­se­quent op­er­a­tions by the TTPS and armed forces - some of which have been pub­li­cised and some not - many of us may not have been here to­day.”

He thanked the TTPS, army and pris­ons par­tic­u­lar­ly for ac­tions, “to se­cure all of us in this Cham­ber and the peo­ple.”

Je­re­mie said it was clear the prison sys­tem is com­pro­mised, though it wasn’t to say every prison of­fi­cer is com­pro­mised. He said pris­on­ers are be­ing tipped off about raids by prison of­fi­cers.

“As the SIU agents come through the gates, prison of­fi­cers are shout­ing to some of these king­pins ‘X is com­ing’,” he said.

The pris­on­ers can main­tain so­phis­ti­cat­ed com­mu­ni­ca­tion with ex­ter­nal af­fil­i­ates, man­aged lo­gis­tics, di­rect acts of vi­o­lence through use of smug­gled phones, com­pro­mised of­fi­cials and ex­ploita­tion of vis­i­ta­tions, Je­re­mie added.

He said at­tor­neys are some­times in­volved.

“All of these things are en­abled by cor­rupt of­fi­cer/in­mate col­lu­sion net­works and grow­ing black mar­ket economies op­er­at­ing in pris­ons. High risk in­mates in par­tic­u­lar ex­ploit the sys­tem through bribery - there’s a lot of mon­ey pass­ing hands in prison - col­lu­sion, fear­mon­ger­ing against of­fi­cers who re­sist in­volve­ment in il­le­gal ac­tiv­i­ties,” he said.

“The in­sid­i­ous in­flu­ence erodes the pro­fes­sion­al­ism of cor­rec­tions staff, un­der­min­ing our na­tion­al abil­i­ty to con­tain vi­o­lent ac­tors. Of­fi­cers, vis­i­tors and drones are used for smug­gling and strate­gic co-or­di­na­tion of con­tra­band drops, re­in­forc­ing sus­tain­abil­i­ty of these crim­i­nal net­works.”

Lat­er in de­bate, Je­re­mie said au­thor­i­ties had iso­lat­ed cer­tain per­sons in a cer­tain lo­ca­tion.

“That’s not to say the prob­lem is solved. We un­der­stand there are per­sons out­side with whom those per­sons in­side were com­mu­ni­cat­ing...”

As­sas­si­na­tion tar­gets in­formed

He said the SoE was an ur­gent nec­es­sary mea­sure to give law en­force­ment nec­es­sary pow­er to dis­man­tle the crim­i­nal en­ter­prise that threat­ened the state’s se­cu­ri­ty. “That en­ter­prise was de­ter­mined to as­sas­si­nate per­sons in crit­i­cal po­si­tions. We’ve shared some of that in­for­ma­tion with those in­di­vid­u­als. The plan was to at­tack build­ings, gen­er­al­ly hob­ble the jus­tice sys­tems,” he said.

Not­ing the mur­der of a state pros­e­cu­tor dur­ing the last SoE, Je­re­mie said all oth­er pros­e­cu­tors are af­fect­ed.

“I’ve been asked to au­tho­rise grief coun­selling and all man­ner of things for them.”

He said oth­ers were tar­get­ed and oth­er as­sas­si­na­tions planned and it was all “sparked by” or­ders is­sued by “com­man­ders in jail.”

De­spite his­tor­i­cal ri­val­ries, Je­re­mie said gang mem­bers are now in some cas­es, “unit­ed, in oth­er cas­es unit­ing to form a sin­gu­lar co­or­di­nat­ed method of at­tack­ing state in­sti­tu­tions.”

“The pat­tern we now face bears in that re­spect, haunt­ing re­sem­blance to the con­di­tions that pre­ced­ed the 1990 coup at­tempt. As ob­served then and reaf­firmed now, these events are pre­ced­ed by grave frus­tra­tions, ide­o­log­i­cal sol­i­dar­i­ty among vi­o­lent ac­tors and decades-long crit­i­cal laps­es in re­spon­sive­ness by state agen­cies - decades-long in­ac­tion by the lead­er­ship of those on the (PNM) side...”

Gangs armed to the teeth

Je­re­mie said things are very dif­fer­ent now than in 1990.

“Groups out­side of the pris­ons who now take in­struc­tions from their lead­ers in­side prison are armed to the teeth. They pos­sess ex­plo­sives. There’s been press re­ports on C4 ex­plo­sives be­ing found out­side of the prison - the gar­den.”

He said an un­prece­dent­ed con­ver­gence of or­gan­ised crim­i­nal forces threat­en not just pub­lic safe­ty but the foun­da­tions of democ­ra­cy.

“We’re wit­ness­ing a co­or­di­nat­ed surge in vi­o­lent crimes across T&T. Things aren’t oc­cur­ring - when it comes to gang-re­lat­ed homi­cides - by ac­ci­dent, kid­nap­pings are al­so co­or­di­nat­ed.”

What is dif­fer­ent in to­day’s threat from 1990, he added, is the gangs’ op­er­a­tional ca­pac­i­ty to col­lab­o­rate across pre­vi­ous­ly im­pen­e­tra­ble ri­val­ry and pris­ons with so­cial me­dia av­enues, mul­ti­ple forms of so­phis­ti­cat­ed and en­crypt­ed com­mu­ni­ca­tion, many plat­forms, plus com­plex flow of mon­ey, arms and equip­ment to gangs from oth­er in­ter­na­tion­al crim­i­nal or­gan­i­sa­tions.