Police corporal held under detention order for being a gang member

A police corporal with 24 years of service was detained by his peers on Wednesday night, after a Preventive Detention Order (PDO) was executed in relation to allegations that he is a member of a gang.

The officer was taken to the Besson Street Police Station for “safekeeping,” after he was held during an exercise in the Port-of-Spain Division by members of the Special Investigations Unit (SIU).

Police said the corporal, who was last assigned to a station in the North Eastern Division, was moved around midday yesterday to an unknown location, where he was expected to be interrogated.

The lawman, who was previously assigned to the South Western Division, is being investigated for reportedly issuing instructions to gang members to seize and distribute narcotics, as well as claims that he is a frequent visitor to Venezuela.

The arrest came hours after 19 PDOs, signed by Homeland Security Minister Roger Alexander, were gazetted and published on Tuesday.

The orders were made in accordance with Paragraph 2 of the Schedule to the Emergency Powers Regulations (2025), which states that the minister may, if satisfied with respect to any person that, “with a view to preventing him from acting in any manner prejudicial to public safety and, it is necessary to provide for his preventive detention, make an order that he be detained and stating concisely the grounds for such detention; and whereas it is further provided in paragraph 3v(1) of the Schedule of the Emergency Powers Regulations, 2025, that any person in respect of whom a detention order is in force may be arrested without warrant by any police officer and may be detained in such place and under such conditions as the Minister may from time to time direct.”