The Gov­ern­ment of Trinidad and To­ba­go has de­clared a State of Emer­gency fol­low­ing con­fir­ma­tion of a co­or­di­nat­ed and dan­ger­ous crim­i­nal net­work op­er­at­ing from with­in the na­tion’s prison sys­tem.

The move fol­lows a for­mal rec­om­men­da­tion from Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice Al­lis­ter Gue­var­ro, who cit­ed cred­i­ble in­tel­li­gence that in­car­cer­at­ed in­di­vid­u­als are lever­ag­ing in­ter­nal and ex­ter­nal con­nec­tions to or­ches­trate at­tacks on se­nior po­lice of­fi­cers, ju­di­cial fig­ures, per­son­nel with­in the Of­fice of the Di­rec­tor of Pub­lic Pros­e­cu­tions, and prison of­fi­cers.

Of­fi­cials say the cam­paign is struc­tured and in­volves mul­ti­ple crim­i­nal el­e­ments work­ing in con­cert, with a lev­el of plan­ning and ex­e­cu­tion that sur­pass­es the ca­pa­bil­i­ty of con­ven­tion­al law en­force­ment re­spons­es.

A key en­abler of the threat has been the il­le­gal traf­fick­ing of mo­bile phones in­to pris­ons by com­pro­mised in­sid­ers, al­low­ing en­crypt­ed com­mu­ni­ca­tions be­tween in­mates and out­side op­er­a­tives. The fund­ing for these op­er­a­tions has re­port­ed­ly come from a range of vi­o­lent and or­gan­ised crimes, in­clud­ing high-val­ue rob­beries, armed home in­va­sions, kid­nap­ping, ex­tor­tion, and the ex­ploita­tion of state-fund­ed pro­grammes and con­tracts.

Giv­en the sever­i­ty of the threat, the State of Emer­gency will em­pow­er law en­force­ment agen­cies to im­me­di­ate­ly con­tain the sit­u­a­tion, boost in­ter-agency co­or­di­na­tion, and ac­cess the nec­es­sary re­sources and au­thor­i­ty to dis­rupt and neu­tralise the crim­i­nal net­work. How­ev­er, no cur­few has been im­posed at this time.

A spe­cialised Threat Re­sponse Group com­pris­ing var­i­ous arms of the pro­tec­tive ser­vices has been es­tab­lished with a spe­cif­ic man­date to dis­man­tle the net­work. An emer­gency brief­ing was held on the night of Ju­ly 17 with the Prime Min­is­ter and At­tor­ney Gen­er­al, lead­ing to the swift ex­e­cu­tion of con­tain­ment mea­sures, in­clud­ing the strate­gic re­lo­ca­tion of high-risk in­mates to dis­rupt com­mand struc­tures.

Law en­force­ment has al­ready be­gun tar­get­ed overt and covert op­er­a­tions which will con­tin­ue un­til the threat is neu­tralised.

The Trinidad and To­ba­go Po­lice Ser­vice has as­sured the pub­lic that it re­mains com­mit­ted to pro­tect­ing the coun­try’s de­mo­c­ra­t­ic in­sti­tu­tions and the safe­ty of all cit­i­zens. Au­thor­i­ties are urg­ing the pub­lic to re­main calm, co­op­er­ate with law en­force­ment, and re­port any sus­pi­cious ac­tiv­i­ty.