Jensen La Vende

Se­nior Re­porter

jensen.lavende@guardian.co.tt

Deputy Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice Ju­nior Ben­jamin says the State of Emer­gency (SoE), which be­gan on De­cem­ber 30 last year, has been suc­cess­ful in re­duc­ing gang ac­tiv­i­ty and se­ri­ous crime.

“So, I’m say­ing that in terms of my per­son­al view, it is still very much a suc­cess. We con­tin­ue to push our of­fi­cers to have that po­lice vis­i­bil­i­ty, and we are al­low­ing in­tel­li­gence to lead us.”

The SoE was de­clared af­ter po­lice in­formed the Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Coun­cil that fol­low­ing an at­tempt to kill a sus­pect­ed gang leader out­side the Besson Street Po­lice Sta­tion, there would have been re­tal­ia­to­ry gun at­tacks.

A day lat­er, five men were mur­dered and po­lice said there were con­cerns about in­creased vi­o­lent gang ac­tiv­i­ties as a re­sult.

In a tele­phone in­ter­view with Guardian Me­dia yes­ter­day, on the one-month an­niver­sary of the SoE, Ben­jamin said while more could be done, he is com­fort­ed by the suc­cess so far.

“We want­ed to en­sure that as we seek to ad­dress the cur­rent sit­u­a­tion, that it would yield to a re­duc­tion in crime and that cer­tain­ly we have seen. To this point, we have 30 mur­ders against 42 in 2024. And I think it’s 60 we would have had in 2023. So, cer­tain­ly, when you look at those num­bers, we have done well. We are hum­bled; I don’t want to say that we have done well. Be­cause I still think that un­der an SoE, 30 mur­ders might be 30 mur­ders too much. We want to bring that down.”

Ben­jamin added that up to Mon­day, the sta­tis­tics showed that there was a 60 to 65 per cent re­duc­tion in vi­o­lent crimes. This, he said, is be­cause of­fi­cers were out on pa­trols and con­duct­ing ex­er­cis­es, which he said will con­tin­ue as of­fi­cers en­gage in in­tel­li­gence-led polic­ing.

Crim­i­nol­o­gist Dr Mal­isa Nep­tune-Fi­garo agreed that the SoE has been suc­cess­ful, but hoped that a re­vamp­ing of the crim­i­nal jus­tice sys­tem would be done to main­tain the suc­cess­es seen.

“I think peo­ple, they want a quick, hard and fast so­lu­tion. And while I don’t be­lieve that the SoE is sus­tain­able, I be­lieve it takes a lit­tle bit of grad­ual steps in­to try­ing to fig­ure out how best to ap­proach the sit­u­a­tion.”

She said the SoE will not be enough to fix the prob­lem.

Raids in En­ter­prise

Mean­while, six peo­ple were ar­rest­ed and a quan­ti­ty of nar­cotics was seized when po­lice con­duct­ed an ex­er­cise in En­ter­prise, Ch­agua­nas, from around 4 am yes­ter­day.

A team of 50 po­lice of­fi­cers, led by ACP Wayne Mys­tar and ASP Salin­dra Singh, raid­ed sev­er­al ar­eas search­ing for arms, am­mu­ni­tion, il­le­gal drugs and ar­rest­ing peo­ple on out­stand­ing war­rants.

Mys­tar said there was an uptick in crim­i­nal ac­tiv­i­ty in En­ter­prise.

“We are try­ing to see if we can get this area back, based on our da­ta we are look­ing with deal­ing with some in­for­ma­tion, we have the nec­es­sary in­tel­li­gence and we want to keep En­ter­prise in a qui­et state in terms of sup­pres­sion.”