Defence Minister: ZOSOs won’t be in place for more than five years

News Desk

Min­is­ter of De­fence Wayne Sturge says he does not an­tic­i­pate the Zone of Spe­cial Op­er­a­tions (ZOSOs) to re­main in ef­fect in dif­fer­ent com­mu­ni­ties across T&T for more than five years if the bill be­comes law.

As of yes­ter­day af­ter­noon, the Re­form (Zones of Spe­cial Op­er­a­tion) (Spe­cial Se­cu­ri­ty and Com­mu­ni­ty De­vel­op­ment Mea­sures) Bill, 2026, was still be­ing de­bat­ed in the Sen­ate.

The Bill was passed in the Low­er House ear­ly on Sat­ur­day morn­ing with a di­vi­sion of 27 for and 11 against.

Sturge made the com­ment dur­ing an in­ter­view on TTT’s Trinidad and To­ba­go To­day morn­ing pro­gramme, af­ter be­ing asked how long the height­ened op­er­a­tions would re­main in ef­fect once in­tro­duced.

Not­ing that the ZOSOs were not in­tend­ed to be a per­ma­nent se­cu­ri­ty arrange­ment, as it seeks to treat di­rect­ly with vi­o­lent crim­i­nal el­e­ments, Sturge said, “If the ZOSO is work­ing as it sup­posed to, there might not be need for the op­er­a­tion to be car­ried out for more than two or three years, I doubt more than five years be­cause we have to tar­get cer­tain pock­ets in cer­tain places and once we in essence get rid of the gang lead­ers and they’re locked away for a long time and once we can stop the in­flow of guns and am­mu­ni­tion, then you will see the vi­o­lent crime takes a se­ri­ous nose­dive and there won’t be need for such in­tense op­er­a­tions, nor­mal polic­ing would do.”

Sturge al­so re­spond­ed to crit­ics of the strat­e­gy, not­ing that in prac­tice, “in­for­mal” ZOSOs have been in­tro­duced at dif­fer­ent com­mu­ni­ties across Trinidad with mea­sur­able re­sults.

Re­fer­ring to the in­tro­duc­tion of height­ened po­lice op­er­a­tions with reg­i­ment sup­port in Laven­tille, Diego Mar­tin, Tu­na­puna and En­ter­prise, Ch­agua­nas, over the years, Sturge said these ac­tiv­i­ties have yield­ed re­sults in sup­press­ing dif­fer­ent cat­e­gories of vi­o­lent crime.

He said in­tro­duc­ing spe­cif­ic leg­is­la­tion cater­ing to the pro­vi­sions of a des­ig­nat­ed zone would en­hance the abil­i­ty of the au­thor­i­ties to ef­fec­tive­ly fight crime.

“What we are try­ing to do now is have the ZOSO but un­der the cov­er of law, so you can’t have cit­i­zens to obey the law but you’re car­ry­ing out op­er­a­tions with­out the cov­er of law... you lose your le­git­i­ma­cy and you lose your abil­i­ty to gov­ern.”

Dur­ing the State of Emer­gency (SoE), which was de­clared in Ju­ly 18, 2025, sev­er­al pur­port­ed gang lead­ers and gang mem­bers were de­tained un­der pre­ven­ta­tive de­ten­tion or­ders (PDOs). Some of those de­tained were housed at mil­i­tary bases as part of in­creased se­cu­ri­ty pre­cau­tions against the in­flux of con­tra­band.

Sturge added that once the SoE is lift­ed at the end of the month, de­pend­ing on what ev­i­dence was avail­able to the po­lice, some sus­pects won’t be re­leased.

“Not all of these gang lead­ers will re­turn to the free world... just a hand­ful,” he said.

“Some of them we ex­pect will be charged, some will not be, but we don’t fore­see those who re­main in prison walls be­ing able to do as they have done over the last ten years, be­cause the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al has tak­en the nov­el step of de­clar­ing Teteron (Bar­racks) and Staubles (Bay) and these bases as pris­ons.

“So al­though the SoE ends, these peo­ple won’t be go­ing back to the Max­i­mum Se­cu­ri­ty Prison and Gold­en Grove Prison, where they can com­mu­ni­cate as freely as they did be­fore. So, once we are able to lim­it, or as far as pos­si­ble elim­i­nate their abil­i­ty to com­mu­ni­cate with the out­side, then I be­lieve we’ll see a con­tin­ued re­duc­tion.”

For this rea­son, Sturge said while the lift­ing of states of emer­gency was usu­al­ly fol­lowed by a resur­gence in vi­o­lence, he did not an­tic­i­pate any uptick in vi­o­lence with the in­tro­duc­tion of ZOSOs.

In ad­di­tion to an­ti-crime op­er­a­tions, Sturge said com­mu­ni­ty-lev­el so­cial en­gage­ment will al­so be in­tro­duced as part of the ZOSOs. He said such a mul­ti-pronged ap­proach to crime-fight­ing is geared to­wards tack­ling crim­i­nal­i­ty at dif­fer­ent lev­els, but ac­knowl­edged that de­spite Gov­ern­ment’s ef­forts, some mur­ders could not be solved strict­ly with po­lice ac­tion.

Re­fer­ring to in­ter-gen­der vi­o­lence, Sturge said such in­ci­dents could on­ly be ad­dressed through sus­tained re-ed­u­ca­tion and so­cial­i­sa­tion.

“A man who wants to kill his wife be­cause she cheat­ed on him, no gov­ern­ment can pre­vent that in the short-term. That is the type of thing you treat with on a be­hav­iour­al lev­el, you have to ed­u­cate and in­cul­cate val­ues which per­sons would know women are not ob­jects to be pos­sessed. So, you can’t con­trol peo­ple and un­der­stand a horn is not a horn if you take it on.”