Jensen La Vende

Se­nior Re­porter

jensen.lavende@guardian.co.tt

Or­ders have been is­sued for two more al­leged gang­sters to be de­tained at the Max­i­mum Se­cu­ri­ty Prison in Arou­ca by Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Fitzger­ald Hinds.

The two are al­leged­ly mem­bers of the Sev­en gang. A de­ten­tion or­der had pre­vi­ous­ly been served on an al­leged mem­ber of the ri­val Sixx gang.

In the de­ten­tion or­ders is­sued on Tues­day, Hinds said Jonathan “Frog­gy” Bushell and Ezekiel “Easy” Mor­ris were be­ing de­tained to pre­vent re­tal­ia­to­ry gun vi­o­lence.

The or­der stat­ed that Bushell, of Jern­ing­ham Av­enue, Bel­mont, and Mor­ris, of Awai Lands, Bel­mont, were “cred­i­bly iden­ti­fied as a per­son as­so­ci­at­ed with a crim­i­nal or­gan­i­sa­tion known as the Sev­en/7 gang (Alien Fac­tion) who has been re­cruit­ed, and has the means, to car­ry out vi­o­lent re­tal­ia­to­ry reprisals in­volv­ing the use of high-pow­ered weapons, pur­suant to in­struc­tions giv­en by a crim­i­nal as­so­ciate.”

A de­ten­tion or­der was al­so is­sued for Kevon Bocage, of Toma­to Trace, Diego Mar­tin, who was “cred­i­bly iden­ti­fied as a traf­fick­er of nar­cotics and il­le­gal firearms, and in­tends to traf­fic high pow­ered as­sault ri­fles to crim­i­nal or­gan­i­sa­tions to com­mit mur­der and to fu­el an on­go­ing vi­o­lent war by the said crim­i­nal or­gan­i­sa­tions.”

The trio will join Shum­ba James, Calvin Lee and Joshua Roberts in de­ten­tion. James was held af­ter po­lice pre­sent­ed in­for­ma­tion to Hinds of his sup­posed in­volve­ment in a plot to mur­der state wit­ness­es. Lee, is the al­leged leader of the Sixx gang, while Roberts was de­tained be­cause he was al­leged­ly re­cruit­ed to at­tack prison of­fi­cers.

Last Fri­day, po­lice said 97 gang­sters had been ar­rest­ed with­in the first month of the state of emer­gency. At a me­dia brief­ing on Jan­u­ary 24, TTPS le­gal of­fi­cer Sgt Ver­son Jeanville said the po­lice were com­pil­ing in­for­ma­tion to take to the Di­rec­tor of Pub­lic Pros­e­cu­tions on sev­er­al al­leged gang­sters. How­ev­er, he de­clined to com­ment on the num­ber of files be­ing re­viewed and the num­ber of gang­sters like­ly to be af­fect­ed.

“I wouldn’t want to give you a spe­cif­ic num­ber, but I can as­sure you that sev­er­al files have in fact been sub­mit­ted in re­la­tion to the crim­i­nal gang-re­lat­ed ac­tiv­i­ties of these per­sons. Those files are be­ing re­viewed for ev­i­den­tial suf­fi­cien­cy to en­sure that they meet the re­quire­ments of the leg­is­la­tion. Very soon, we hope to ap­proach the Of­fice of the Di­rec­tor of Pub­lic Pros­e­cu­tions con­cern­ing those in­ves­ti­ga­tions” he said.

Lead­ing up to the De­cem­ber 30 de­c­la­ra­tion of the SoE, po­lice in­formed the Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Coun­cil that fol­low­ing an at­tempt to kill Lee out­side the Besson Street Po­lice Sta­tion there were warn­ings about reprisal gun at­tacks.

Dur­ing the at­tack on Lee, one man was killed and a day lat­er, five men were killed. Po­lice said there were con­cerns about in­creased vi­o­lent gang ac­tiv­i­ties as a re­sult.