13,000 charges laid across all SoEs since Dec 2024

Eliz­a­beth Gon­za­les

Se­nior Re­porter

eliz­a­beth.gon­za­[email protected]

A to­tal of 13,317 crim­i­nal charges were laid against 8,067 peo­ple dur­ing three states of emer­gency in Trinidad and To­ba­go be­tween De­cem­ber 2024 and Sep­tem­ber 2026.

The fig­ures were re­leased by the Trinidad and To­ba­go Po­lice Ser­vice (TTPS) in re­sponse to a Free­dom of In­for­ma­tion Act re­quest sub­mit­ted on be­half of Vishal Per­sad.

In a let­ter dat­ed Oc­to­ber 9, 2026, the TTPS Le­gal Unit pro­vid­ed a break­down of the num­ber of peo­ple ar­rest­ed and charged, along with the num­ber of charges laid dur­ing each emer­gency.

Dur­ing the state of emer­gency, from De­cem­ber 30, 2024, to April 13, 2025, po­lice record­ed 2,092 peo­ple ar­rest­ed and charged, with 3,440 charges laid.

The sec­ond emer­gency, from Ju­ly 18, 2025, to Jan­u­ary 31, 2026, record­ed 3,226 peo­ple ar­rest­ed and charged and 5,320 charges laid.

Dur­ing the third emer­gency, from March 3 to Sep­tem­ber 17, 2026, po­lice record­ed 2,749 peo­ple ar­rest­ed and charged, with 4,557 charges laid.

The sec­ond SoE ac­count­ed for ap­prox­i­mate­ly 40 per cent of the charges record­ed across the three pe­ri­ods.

The num­ber of charges in­creased by 1,880 be­tween the first and sec­ond emer­gen­cies, an in­crease of ap­prox­i­mate­ly 55 per cent. Charges then de­clined by 763 dur­ing the third emer­gency.

The fig­ures were pro­vid­ed fol­low­ing an ap­pli­ca­tion dat­ed Au­gust 21 and sub­mit­ted by at­tor­ney Keron Ramkhal­whan on be­half of Per­sad. The re­quest asked for sta­tis­ti­cal re­ports gen­er­at­ed by the po­lice Crime and Prob­lem Analy­sis Unit re­lat­ing to ar­rests and charges dur­ing the states of emer­gency be­tween 2024 and 2026.

In Sep­tem­ber, Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar re­port­ed­ly stat­ed that 5,802 peo­ple had been ar­rest­ed and 3,552 charged as at Sep­tem­ber 13, 2026.

The lat­est TTPS re­sponse record­ed 2,749 peo­ple ar­rest­ed and charged for the full pe­ri­od end­ing Sep­tem­ber 17, a dif­fer­ence of 803 from the ear­li­er re­port­ed fig­ure. The re­ports cov­er dif­fer­ent pe­ri­ods, and the FOIA re­sponse does not ex­plain the dif­fer­ence.

Dur­ing the sec­ond SoE, Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Roger Alexan­der re­port­ed that 153 peo­ple had been ar­rest­ed un­der pre­ven­tive de­ten­tion or­der arrange­ments, while 29 de­tainees had been for­mal­ly charged at the time of his state­ment.

How­ev­er, on a sep­a­rate oc­ca­sion, Alexan­der re­port­ed that 5,767 peo­ple had been ar­rest­ed dur­ing the first 191 days of the State of Emer­gency in 2026.

Fol­low­ing the end of the third emer­gency, the Prison Ser­vice re­port­ed that 569 re­vo­ca­tion or­ders had been ex­e­cut­ed by Sep­tem­ber 17.

Of those af­fect­ed, 395 peo­ple were re­leased, while 174 re­mained in cus­tody on oth­er mat­ters. A to­tal of 776 peo­ple were held on PDOs across the three states of emer­gency.

The lat­est TTPS re­sponse did not pro­vide a break­down of the of­fences for which the 13,317 charges were laid. It al­so did not pro­vide fig­ures for con­vic­tions, ac­quit­tals, dis­missed charges or cas­es still be­fore the courts.