Deputy Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice (DCP), Op­er­a­tions, Curt Si­mon yes­ter­day said one of the 17 per­sons so far de­tained un­der the State of Emer­gency reg­u­la­tions is gear­ing up to chal­lenge their de­ten­tion.

He dis­closed the in­for­ma­tion dur­ing a me­dia con­fer­ence at the Po­lice Ad­min­is­tra­tion Build­ing, Port-of-Spain, yes­ter­day.

Asked specif­i­cal­ly about whether there had been any le­gal chal­lenges to the de­ten­tions, Si­mon said, “I do not think any par­tic­u­lar chal­lenge has been made, but I am hear­ing there may be one in the pipeline.”

Un­able to say who this chal­lenger may be, the act­ing DCP as­sured, “The Po­lice Ser­vice, we are mak­ing use of the pro­vi­sions, of course, and we are even try­ing to up our ante with re­gards to that.”

It’s been 43 days since the State of Emer­gency (SoE) was en­forced, dur­ing which time, he said 1,978 pri­or­i­ty of­fend­ers were tar­get­ed; 1,741 per­sons ar­rest­ed; 2,328 op­er­a­tions car­ried out; 15,528 search­es con­duct­ed; and 82 firearms so far re­cov­ered.

He ap­plaud­ed of­fi­cers for their hard work dur­ing the SoE.

Mean­while, act­ing Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice (CoP) Ju­nior Ben­jamin re­it­er­at­ed that he does not in­tend to dis­miss any of the poli­cies or dis­man­tle any of the in­ter­nal in­fra­struc­ture that was in­tro­duced by his pre­de­ces­sor Er­la Hare­wood-Christo­pher.

In­stead, he as­sured he will be con­tin­u­ing to build on them, as he was about grow­ing what he de­scribed as “an awe­some or­gan­i­sa­tion.” Ad­dress­ing the pub­lic for the first time since he re­ceived his let­ter of ap­point­ment on Feb­ru­ary 6 from the Po­lice Ser­vice Com­mis­sion (PolSC), Ben­jamin said the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice (TTPS) re­quired lead­er­ship that “knows the way, goes the way and shows the way.”

Thank­ing the em­bat­tled CoP for her “con­sci­en­tious and com­mit­ted ser­vice to the or­gan­i­sa­tion,” Ben­jamin said, “she has been a men­tor, a mod­el, and a mul­ti­pli­er with­in the or­gan­i­sa­tion.”

La­belling him­self a “com­mis­sion­er for all,” he said he now con­sid­ers him­self re­spon­si­ble for all po­lice of­fi­cers and civil­ians em­ployed through­out the TTPS.

Say­ing he was in­tent on hear­ing from the main stake­hold­ers, which in­clude the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice So­cial and Wel­fare As­so­ci­a­tion (TTPSS­WA), Ben­jamin said that meet­ing is sched­uled for this week.

Re­gard­ing his style of lead­er­ship, Ben­jamin said, “Every­body has dif­fer­ent styles of lead­er­ship. My style of lead­er­ship is al­ways one about re­al­ly try­ing to meet the peo­ple where they are.”

Re­it­er­at­ing that he cared for all, he added, “My style would al­ways be to go and meet the peo­ple and see how we can work to­geth­er for the greater ben­e­fit of the or­gan­i­sa­tion.”