Re­gion­al se­cu­ri­ty con­sul­tant Garvin Heer­ah is urg­ing the po­lice to keep up their pres­sure on or­gan­ised crime gangs, even af­ter 18 sus­pects were re­leased fol­low­ing a se­ries of raids last week.

Po­lice said 11 of the sus­pects round­ed up dur­ing raids in east Port-of-Spain were charged with loi­ter­ing while the rest were re­leased with­out any charges be­ing laid.

Speak­ing with Guardian Me­dia af­ter the launch of the Bet­ter Busi­ness TT on­line plat­form in Ch­agua­nas yes­ter­day, Heer­ah, who is the for­mer head of the Na­tion­al Op­er­a­tions Cen­tre, said while the ef­fort from the po­lice was com­mend­able, a more di­rect ap­proach was need­ed to keep vi­o­lent gang mem­bers in cus­tody.

He sug­gest­ed the po­lice con­tin­ue to fo­cus their ex­er­cis­es on dis­rupt­ing gang ac­tiv­i­ties and warned that hav­ing the sus­pects re­leased short­ly af­ter their ar­rest would send the wrong mes­sage.

“The shift of the nar­ra­tive is that these al­leged gang­sters can say you ar­rest­ed me but I’m free now. The nar­ra­tive has to be changed, it has to be com­mand­ed, it has to be con­trolled by the po­lice ser­vice—is that we know who you are, we are go­ing to stay on top of you and be in your face,” he said.

He had some ad­vice for the po­lice fol­low­ing the re­lease of the al­leged gang­sters.

“My ad­dress to the po­lice ser­vice this morn­ing (Wednes­day) is let’s try and re­view how we do busi­ness and try an ‘in your face’ sort of ap­proach to make life un­com­fort­able for the crim­i­nals.”

Af­ter the re­lease of the sus­pects was re­port­ed, sev­er­al so­cial me­dia users ex­pressed their dis­ap­point­ment over the rel­a­tive­ly mi­nor charges laid.

Con­tact­ed for com­ment yes­ter­day, one se­nior po­lice of­fi­cer said while he un­der­stood the frus­tra­tion of the pub­lic, the na­ture of gang in­ves­ti­ga­tions re­quired that po­lice be pa­tient in their tech­niques.

The of­fi­cer not­ed that gath­er­ing ev­i­dence to de­vel­op a case against crim­i­nals took time, adding that while the sus­pects were not charged with se­ri­ous crimes this time, it was not the end of their in­ves­ti­ga­tion.

“When you’re build­ing a case against a gang, you have to gath­er enough ev­i­dence to ap­proach the Di­rec­tor of Pub­lic Pros­e­cu­tions to meet the ev­i­den­tiary thresh­old re­quired.

“It’s not as sim­ple as charg­ing some­one who has a gun or drugs, this is a pro­tract­ed in­ves­ti­ga­tion, mean­ing it hap­pens over a pe­ri­od of time. These par­tic­u­lar in­ves­ti­ga­tions will place spe­cial re­spon­si­bil­i­ties on the po­lice of­fi­cers in­ves­ti­gat­ing,” the se­nior of­fi­cer said.

The of­fi­cer al­so called on the pub­lic to be pa­tient with their ex­pec­ta­tions, as the po­lice had not giv­en up in their pur­suit of crim­i­nals.

“It’s part of the process. In mat­ters like these you can’t just hold them and charge them,” the of­fi­cer ad­vised.

Last week, fol­low­ing the ar­rest of the al­leged gang mem­bers, Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice Er­la Hare­wood-Christo­pher is­sued a voice note and a press re­lease on Fri­day, where she sent a stern warn­ing to gang­sters.

She said then, “The crim­i­nals have made their in­ten­tions clear and ... if you in­tend to be on the wrong side of the law, know that we are com­ing af­ter you.”