T&T is un­der a State of Emer­gency (SoE) for the sec­ond time in as many months.

In an­nounc­ing the move yes­ter­day, Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice (CoP) Al­lis­ter Gue­var­ro said cred­i­ble in­tel­li­gence point­ing to the for­ma­tion of an or­gan­ised crime syn­di­cate specif­i­cal­ly look­ing to tar­get se­nior mem­bers of the State forced the de­ci­sion.

Speak­ing dur­ing an emer­gency me­dia brief­ing at the Po­lice Ad­min­is­tra­tion Build­ing, Port-of-Spain, the top cop said he and his of­fi­cers had been on the ground hours be­fore mid­night on Thurs­day, when the SoE would have been pro­claimed.

The cur­rent SoE will re­main in ef­fect for the next 15 days in the first in­stance.

Say­ing he had spent sev­er­al hours su­per­vis­ing the “ex­trac­tion” of gang lead­ers from the Max­i­mum Se­cu­ri­ty Prison (MSP), Gold­en Grove, Pi­ar­co, dur­ing the ear­ly hours yes­ter­day, Gue­var­ro promised these per­sons would be con­tained in a place with­out the op­por­tu­ni­ty for ex­ter­nal com­mu­ni­ca­tion. He de­clined to re­veal the lo­ca­tion but it was sub­se­quent­ly in the T&T Gazette that the gang­sters had been re­moved to the T&T De­fence Force head­quar­ters in Ch­aguara­mas.

While he de­clined to say just how many peo­ple had been re­lo­cat­ed, he said, “Or­gan­ised crim­i­nal gangs with per­sons in­side of the pris­ons and per­sons op­er­at­ing on the out­side of the pris­ons, have formed them­selves in­to what I would want to term an or­gan­ised crime syn­di­cate, and they were plan­ning ac­tive­ly so to car­ry out as­sas­si­na­tions, rob­beries and kid­nap­pings.”

This, he said, was dif­fer­ent from the last SoE, which was im­ple­ment­ed to help curb crime and re­duce gang vi­o­lence.

Ad­mit­ting the trou­bling in­for­ma­tion was enough to make him ap­proach the Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Coun­cil (NSC) on Thurs­day night, where he held talks with Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar and At­tor­ney Gen­er­al John Je­re­mie, Gue­var­ro said it was with a heavy heart he put forth the rec­om­men­da­tion for a SoE.

He said their aim was to dis­rupt and dis­man­tle the syn­di­cate’s op­er­a­tions.

“One where they would not have ac­cess to the lib­er­al com­mu­ni­ca­tion that they were us­ing to fa­cil­i­tate this reign of ter­ror up­on the great cit­i­zens of T&T,” Gue­var­ro said.

He said their in­tel­li­gence had traced re­cent acts of kid­nap­ping and homi­cides against cit­i­zens back to the crime syn­di­cate.

The SoE came less than 12 hours af­ter Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Roger Alexan­der de­nied there had been an in­crease in crime gen­er­al­ly, fol­lowed by a spike in mur­ders and kid­nap­pings.

Gue­var­ro, how­ev­er, re­in­forced Alexan­der’s sen­ti­ments, as he said, “The Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter was ab­solute­ly cor­rect when he said that there is no uptick in crime. Crime sta­tis­tics ac­tu­al­ly are low­er in com­par­i­son to last year and the year be­fore, so that’s a no-brain­er.”

Mov­ing to si­lence spec­u­la­tion that the cur­rent SoE was con­nect­ed to the last one, which spanned the pe­ri­od De­cem­ber 30, 2024, to April 16, 2025, Gue­var­ro said, “This has noth­ing to do, ab­solute­ly noth­ing to do with any par­tic­u­lar threat to a politi­cian, any par­tic­u­lar threat to any group of per­sons out­side of what I men­tioned here to you.

“... That there are a group of crim­i­nals in our so­ci­ety, some of them be­hind bars and some of them on the out­side, that have formed them­selves in­to an amal­ga­mat­ed unit of an or­gan­ised crime syn­di­cate and are in­tent on wreak­ing hav­oc on the good cit­i­zens of T&T.”

Al­though there is no cur­few in place, po­lice of­fi­cers can now en­ter the premis­es of per­sons with­out a search war­rant, whilst sol­diers will en­joy the pow­ers of ar­rest.

How­ev­er, Gue­var­ro as­sured cit­i­zens that they could “con­tin­ue to en­joy their lifestyle with­out plac­ing any un­due sort of strain on them.”

How­ev­er, he warned, “The per­sons who have to be con­cerned are the crim­i­nals be­cause this is what that par­tic­u­lar SOE and the emer­gency pow­ers are geared to and aimed at tar­get­ing.”

Un­will­ing to give much else away, Gue­var­ro said his of­fi­cers had be­gun overt and covert op­er­a­tions five min­utes af­ter he re­ceived the SoE procla­ma­tion, and the trans­fer of pris­on­ers was on­ly one as­pect of the op­er­a­tion.

“So even whilst I was ap­proach­ing the Prime Min­is­ter and the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al to take ac­tion, I was hope­ful and placed things in po­si­tion to act im­me­di­ate­ly.”

Asked if there were rogue law en­force­ment of­fi­cers in­volved in crim­i­nal ac­tiv­i­ties, he said, “If I was to an­swer that ques­tion and tell you no, I would be ly­ing to you and the mem­bers of the pub­lic. Be­cause how else would Ms (Suzette) Mar­tin and her team, al­most on a week­ly ba­sis, be find­ing phones in­side of the same cells?

“So, there are per­sons who seem hell-bent on fa­cil­i­tat­ing the com­mu­ni­ca­tion of these per­sons with the out­side, so by re­mov­ing them from that en­vi­ron­ment and plac­ing them in one where they are a lot more se­cure, I can feel rest as­sured that that com­mu­ni­ca­tion link is bro­ken.”

Gue­var­ro said kid­nap­pings, home in­va­sions, ex­tor­tions, and the in­fil­tra­tion of URP gangs, cou­pled with the award­ing of state con­tracts, were “the things that they (crim­i­nals) are us­ing to fund” their net­works.

He added, “And guess what they’re buy­ing with the mon­ey? More guns to come af­ter you and that is what we want to pre­vent.”

Asked how he in­tend­ed to en­sure his of­fi­cers did not abuse the ex­pand­ed scope of pow­ers, the CoP cau­tioned, “Let us not be pre­sump­tive and be­lieve that that is the di­rec­tion we’re go­ing. I want T&T to be able to feel safe. I don’t want to pre­sume that my of­fi­cers will go out there and abuse the cit­i­zens, and if any re­ports of that come to my at­ten­tion, I will treat with it.”