Po­lice have ar­rest­ed 56 peo­ple, re­cov­ered six il­le­gal firearms, and de­tect­ed more than 400 traf­fic of­fences dur­ing the first 24 hours of the State of Emer­gency, which took ef­fect from mid­night on Fri­day 18 Ju­ly 2025.

The Trinidad and To­ba­go Po­lice Ser­vice (TTPS) said it con­duct­ed 104 co­or­di­nat­ed ex­er­cis­es across the coun­try, in­clud­ing 629 search­es and strate­gic road­block op­er­a­tions that un­cov­ered 407 traf­fic in­frac­tions.

The high-im­pact op­er­a­tions form part of a na­tion­al crack­down tar­get­ing mem­bers of or­gan­ised crim­i­nal syn­di­cates and gangs.

Of­fi­cers seized a range of il­le­gal weapons, in­clud­ing pis­tols, a re­volver, a shot­gun, and a ri­fle, along with 33 rounds of am­mu­ni­tion. Ac­cord­ing to the TTPS, these re­cov­er­ies re­flect its con­tin­ued ef­fort to dis­man­tle armed gang el­e­ments and neu­tralise iden­ti­fied threat ac­tors pos­ing a risk to pub­lic safe­ty.

The po­lice said cer­tain zones saw in­creased ac­tiv­i­ty, with of­fi­cers fo­cus­ing on in­ter­cept­ing in­di­vid­u­als linked to gang net­works across mul­ti­ple di­vi­sions.

In a state­ment, the TTPS reaf­firmed its com­mit­ment to main­tain­ing pub­lic or­der: “Law en­force­ment op­er­a­tions will con­tin­ue with tac­ti­cal pre­ci­sion and com­mu­ni­ty sen­si­tiv­i­ty through­out the emer­gency pe­ri­od with lit­tle dis­rup­tion to law-abid­ing cit­i­zens, who are urged to re­main vig­i­lant and re­port sus­pi­cious ac­tiv­i­ty through of­fi­cial chan­nels.”

The TTPS said it re­mains res­olute in its mis­sion to sup­press gang ac­tiv­i­ty, up­hold the rule of law, and pro­tect the pop­u­la­tion.