Derek Achong

More than 400 law en­force­ment of­fi­cers de­scend­ed up­on apart­ment build­ing com­plex­es in east Port-of-Spain yes­ter­day morn­ing in search of the per­pe­tra­tors of last week's resur­gence of gang vi­o­lence which saw six peo­ple, among them three teenagers, be­ing mur­dered with­in 24 hours of each oth­er. At the end of the sev­en-hour ex­er­cise, 90 res­i­dents, among them four women, were de­tained by po­lice and cart­ed off to po­lice sta­tions in the Port-of-Spain Di­vi­sion to be ques­tioned in re­la­tion to a va­ri­ety of se­ri­ous crimes which oc­curred re­cent­ly in and around east Port-of-Spain.

The ex­er­cise fol­lowed an­oth­er on Thurs­day in which 12 "ma­jor play­ers" in gang and crim­i­nal ac­tiv­i­ty in east Port-of-Spain were ar­rest­ed at their homes at Laven­tille, Sea Lots, Beetham Gar­dens and Nel­son and Dun­can Streets.Yes­ter­day's de­tainees to­geth­er with those from Thurs­day were be­ing kept at dif­fer­ent sta­tions with­in Port-of-Spain up to late yes­ter­day.Some of the de­tainees are ex­pect­ed to be ques­tioned by de­tec­tives of the Homi­cide Bu­reau in re­la­tion to the re­cent spate of mur­ders, while oth­ers will be in­ter­viewed over re­cent rob­beries and pick­pock­et­ing in­ci­dents in Port-of-Spain.Sev­er­al of the men ar­rest­ed will al­so be in­ter­ro­gat­ed by mem­bers of the Crim­i­nal Gang and In­tel­li­gence Unit, po­lice said.Of­fi­cers of the unit are con­sid­er­ing charg­ing some of the de­tainees un­der the An­ti-Gang Act–a piece of leg­is­la­tion that has re­mained vir­tu­al­ly un­used since the im­po­si­tion of the state of emer­gency in 2011.

CNC3 News

Around 3 am yes­ter­day, 300 po­lice of­fi­cers and 100 mem­bers of the De­fence Force, went to com­mu­ni­ties at Dun­can, Nel­son and George Streets, which are lo­cat­ed a stone's throw from­down­town Port-of-Spain's cen­tral busi­ness dis­trict.Po­lice sources said or­gan­is­ers of the ex­er­cise as­sem­bled of­fi­cers from across ten polic­ing di­vi­sions and units to be part of the ex­er­cise, which aimed to put a dent in vi­o­lent crime in the cap­i­tal.The ex­er­cise was co-or­di­nat­ed by ACP Glen Hack­ett and Se­nior Supt Wayne Boyd and was led by ASP Ajith Per­sad and In­spec­tors Sa­hadeo Singh and Har­vey Jawahir.While some of­fi­cers blocked the side streets on the perime­ter of the com­mu­ni­ties be­tween Char­lotte Street and Pica­dil­ly Greens, oth­ers be­gan a com­pre­hen­sive search of the maze of apart­ment build­ings. With the as­sis­tance of snif­fer dogs from the Ca­nine Unit, the of­fi­cers searched al­ley­ways and pas­sage­ways that link the build­ings for drugs and firearms used by the gangs in the com­mu­ni­ties.

The law­men were giv­en aer­i­al as­sis­tance from a na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty he­li­copter which hov­ered over the Hous­ing De­vel­op­ment Cor­po­ra­tion (HDC) build­ing com­plex­es for much of yes­ter­day morn­ing.How­ev­er, de­spite their best ef­forts, the of­fi­cers came up al­most emp­ty-hand­ed, just re­cov­er­ing a mod­est quan­ti­ty of nar­cotics.Po­lice sources said gang mem­bers may have hid­den their stash of il­le­gal weapons in an­tic­i­pa­tion of a strong po­lice re­sponse to last week's mur­der spree.Al­most every apart­ment in Nel­son Street was searched," one se­nior of­fi­cer said.Po­lice sources not­ed that al­though no ma­jor haul of il­le­gal weapons was re­cov­ered, there had been no re­port of vi­o­lent crimes in the com­mu­ni­ties since po­lice stepped up their ef­forts in re­sponse to last week's spike in mur­ders.On Thurs­day, while tour­ing the com­mu­ni­ties Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar an­nounced the im­ple­men­ta­tion of a po­lice post at Dun­can Street as part of her Gov­ern­ment's mea­sure to com­bat crime in east Port-of-Spain.Al­though Per­sad-Bisses­sar ini­tial­ly stat­ed that the post will be opened with­in 48 hours, the dead­line was lat­er re­vised to mid-Sep­tem­ber.