Gail Alexan­der

De­fence Min­is­ter Wayne Sturge yes­ter­day de­clined to con­firm if De­fence Force sol­diers have been in­struct­ed to re­turn to base, and At­tor­ney Gen­er­al John Je­re­mie has made it clear that the State of Emer­gency ex­ten­sion is to com­plete and con­tin­ue cur­rent crit­i­cal gang dis­man­tling op­er­a­tions. As an ex­am­ple, he said de­spite the re­moval of in­mates from the pris­ons, there were re­peat­ed at­tempts to re-es­tab­lish con­tact with peo­ple on the out­side.

Sturge spoke in Par­lia­ment yes­ter­day, re­spond­ing to an Op­po­si­tion query.

Je­re­mie al­so spoke, pi­lot­ing a mo­tion to ex­tend the SoE, ini­tial­ly in force from Ju­ly to Oc­to­ber, for an­oth­er three months un­til Jan­u­ary.

The mo­tion was lat­er passed.

Sturge and Je­re­mie spoke amid pub­lic con­cern on the SoE ex­ten­sion, which was height­ened by fur­ther in­ter­na­tion­al re­ports of US-Venezuela ten­sions. Ques­tions about pos­si­ble war, and whether the SoE ex­ten­sion was linked to this, per­vad­ed many quar­ters yes­ter­day.

In Par­lia­ment, Sturge was asked by Op­po­si­tion Chief Whip Mar­vin Gon­za­les if he could con­firm whether or not De­fence Force sol­diers have been in­struct­ed to re­turn to base with im­me­di­ate ef­fect.

Sturge said, “In keep­ing with the tenets of (Stand­ing Or­der) 27G, I re­spect­ful­ly de­cline giv­ing an an­swer.”

Stand­ing Or­der 27G states that a min­is­ter may de­cline to an­swer a ques­tion if, in his opin­ion, the pub­li­ca­tion of the an­swer would be con­trary to the pub­lic in­ter­est.

Gon­za­les asked if Sturge was pre­pared to ex­e­cute his min­is­te­r­i­al du­ties to an­swer the ques­tions asked.

Sub­se­quent­ly, pi­lot­ing the mo­tion to ex­tend the SoE for three more months, At­tor­ney Gen­er­al Je­re­mie not­ed the Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er’s ref­er­ence that the first SoE was need­ed due to a crim­i­nal syn­di­cate’s plan. This was to as­sas­si­nate peo­ple in crit­i­cal sec­tors, at­tack key in­fra­struc­ture, pre­vent jus­tice be­ing served, and in­flict “chaos.”

Je­re­mie said the State of Emer­gency was an ur­gent, nec­es­sary mea­sure to give law en­force­ment the pow­ers they need­ed to dis­man­tle the planned at­tacks and, thanks to the pro­tec­tive ser­vices’ dili­gent, tire­less ef­fort, that ini­tial cri­sis was suc­cess­ful­ly and ef­fi­cient­ly dealt with.

He cit­ed “in­cre­men­tal gains con­cern­ing law and or­der gen­er­al­ly and dis­rup­tion of over­all crim­i­nal ac­tiv­i­ty aris­ing from ef­forts to sup­press gang ac­tiv­i­ty.”

Jus­ti­fy­ing the ex­ten­sion and not­ing the SoE’s ef­fect on the ini­tial threat, Je­re­mie said it was clear that it had gen­er­at­ed sub­stan­tial ad­di­tion­al gains in na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty in­ter­est and safe­ty.

He said the TTPS and Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter ad­vised that sev­er­al crit­i­cal op­er­a­tions are in train now, and the en­hanced pow­ers un­der the SoE are nec­es­sary for com­ple­tion and con­sol­i­da­tion of their ef­forts to­wards dis­man­tling the gangs and crim­i­nal net­works and keep­ing T&T safe.

Je­re­mie said the ex­ten­sion is to al­low the TTPS and De­fence Force to com­plete and con­tin­ue crit­i­cal op­er­a­tions now in train. Je­re­mie said the Gov­ern­ment is pleased with the progress and re­sults of the ser­vices over the past three and a half months and sup­ports ac­tiv­i­ties’ com­ple­tion.

He said the SoE wasn’t the Gov­ern­ment’s an­ti-crime plan but arose to deal with a “re­al im­mi­nent threat” and is be­ing ex­tend­ed to con­tin­ue to deal with “a re­al im­mi­nent threat.”

Dur­ing the ini­tial SoE de­c­la­ra­tion, Je­re­mie said the TTPS, with en­hanced le­gal au­thor­i­ty, con­duct­ed wide­spread na­tion­wide op­er­a­tions. He gave TTPS sta­tis­tics on the scope and ef­fec­tive­ness of op­er­a­tions , adding that there were al­so re­al suc­cess­es re­gard­ing lead­er­ship dis­rup­tion.

Con­tin­ued at­tempts to con­tact peo­ple in pris­ons

Je­re­mie said amal­ga­mat­ed gang lead­er­ship was re­moved from the Max­i­mum Se­cu­ri­ty Prison, sev­er­ing their di­rect in­flu­ence over street-lev­el op­er­a­tions, dis­rupt­ing es­tab­lished com­mu­ni­ca­tion chan­nels, lim­it­ing gangs’ trans­mis­sion of or­ders, co­or­di­na­tion of crim­i­nal ac­tiv­i­ty, and re­cruit­ment with­in pris­ons.

“Those pris­on­ers ini­tial­ly re­moved are now housed at a se­cure lo­ca­tion from which re­peat­ed at­tempts have been made to re-es­tab­lish con­tact with per­sons out­side the pris­ons. Those at­tempts have al­so failed,” Je­re­mie added.

Pre­ven­tive De­ten­tion Or­ders, he said, al­lowed the TTPS to gen­er­ate valu­able in­tel­li­gence re­gard­ing crim­i­nal net­works, and this is be­ing used for on­go­ing op­er­a­tions “up to to­day to fur­ther dis­man­tle net­works and ap­pre­hend per­pe­tra­tors,” Je­re­mie added.

He said Gov­ern­ment un­der­stood the need for long-term strate­gies against gang-re­lat­ed and oth­er crimes and will im­ple­ment leg­isla­tive and ad­min­is­tra­tive struc­tures for this.