PORT OF SPAIN, Trinidad, Aug 11, CMC – Police Commissioner, Allister Guevarro, Monday confirmed that several prisoners at the Maximum Security Prison (MSP) Golden Grove Prisons, east of here had been re-located to a secret location under the existing state of emergency (SoE).
Guevarro also issued a warning to attorneys that their lives could be in danger from the same prisoners whom they are defending under the SoE.
He said that a number of prisoners at the MSP considered to be threats have been relocated and taken to a secure location over the last weekend as the Trinidad and Tobago Police Service (TTPS) continues to ensure that the imminent threat that forced the SoE to be implemented has been neutralised.
The Trinidad and Tobago government on July 18 declared a nationwide SoE based on the emergence of a highly threatening criminal network that is operational both within and outside of the country’s correctional facilities.
The SoE came nearly three months after ending a 105-day SoE aimed at tackling criminal activity with the police commissioner saying that police received intelligence reports indicating that organised criminal gangs, including individuals both inside and outside the prison system, had formed what he termed an “organised crime syndicate.”
Speaking on a television programme here on Monday, Guevarro told viewers that he had personally supervised the removal of the prisoners over the last weekend “and taken them to a safe place where they are no longer able to continue communicating with their persons on the outside.
“Firth we had the disruption of the threat. We now have the dismantling of that organised criminal gang,” he said, adding that “upon the initial removal of the leadership, what we see as a pseudo leadership or seccond in command” was being established.
“In order for that to be controlled we now have to have further removals,” he said, adding the police are aware of the “persons that need to be controlled and moved from that environment.
“So, we do not want them to become disruptive in the prisons,” he added.
Guevarro said with the removal of the inmates there has been a decline in the number of murders.
“Trinidad and Tobago is a lovey place. I can’t for the life of me understand why these men removed from the prison population to an immediate positive effect on crime reduction. Right now we are having a 35 per cent decrease in the homicide rate just from removing these gentlemen”.
He said these inmates are how angry with their own attorneys “that they are not able to get them out from what they call Guantánamo Bay…and to put them back in MSP “.
He questioned what is within the MPS that these inmates “love so much…but I would like to keep them away from that environment”.
He had advice for the attorneys representing the inmates.
“The same attorneys who are fighting for them, hey are threatening to kill them and the attorneys seem blinded by this blind loyalty. But at the end of the day we shall do what we have to do.
“I would have directed my men to do a duty of care and warn these attorneys, listen, your lives are in danger take precautionary measures. If they want to listen then can listen, if they not…that’s up to them”.
He recalled that on the same day the police had warned the attorneys, a suspect had been detained “and described as one of the key proponents of this threat, we arrested him with weapons, some of them sophisticated weapons.
“He was subsequently interviewed and that matter is being investigated stll but he has appeared in court already on weapons trafficking …so the police continue to work and we want to keep Trinidad and Tobago safe and I will continue to ask Trinidad and Tobago partner with us, keep giving us that information we need so much in the fight against crime
The Police Commissioner says he has no intention of requesting a further state of emergency to treat with the criminal activities in the future.
He said he is likely to be top cop for the next decade and “I do not wish to be continually going to government to be asking for states of emergency to treat with that problem. So I would like to utilise this time to put decisive measures in place to treat with that situation once and for all.
“But I must be a holistic plan to deal with this situation where both the prison and the situation that exists there, the judiciary… police monitoring and law enforcement coming together holistically to treat with this situation once and for all….”
CMC/pr/ir/2025