AG: SoE needed to stop escalating gang violence

At­tor­ney Gen­er­al John Je­re­mie said Gov­ern­ment had “no choice” but to ad­vise the Pres­i­dent to de­clare a state of emer­gency, cit­ing an es­ca­la­tion in gang vi­o­lence, mass shoot­ings and cred­i­ble threats to pub­lic safe­ty.

Ad­dress­ing the na­tion in a rough­ly nine-minute speech on state broad­cast­er TTT with no oth­er me­dia present, AG Je­re­mie said re­cent days saw “a num­ber of vi­o­lent crim­i­nal ac­tiv­i­ties… car­ried out by mem­bers of or­ga­nized crim­i­nal gangs”, in what he de­scribed as “the full gaze of a hor­ri­fied pop­u­la­tion”.

He said crim­i­nal gangs had in­creased acts of vi­o­lence “on a scale so ex­ten­sive” they re­sult­ed in mul­ti­ple deaths and mass shoot­ings, with in­tel­li­gence in­di­cat­ing the pat­tern was set to con­tin­ue.

“The Prime Min­is­ter and the Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Coun­cil had no choice,” the AG said, adding Gov­ern­ment was de­ter­mined nev­er to al­low the coun­try “to de­te­ri­o­rate in­to the state of chaos and blood­shed which we met in May of 2025 when we took of­fice”.

AG Je­re­mie said dur­ing the pre­vi­ous State of Emer­gency, the mur­der rate and se­ri­ous crimes dropped to their low­est lev­els in years due to in­tel­li­gence-led op­er­a­tions by the po­lice and armed forces. He said the cur­rent SoE would al­low the pro­tec­tive ser­vices to act “in a man­ner that would match the es­ca­lat­ing dan­ger” posed to law-abid­ing cit­i­zens and the rule of law.

“From the very ear­ly hours of this morn­ing, strate­gic op­er­a­tions have com­menced,” he said, adding these would con­tin­ue in an in­tel­li­gence-led and tar­get­ed man­ner while Gov­ern­ment pur­sues longer-term mea­sures to main­tain or­der and safe­ty.

Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Roger Alexan­der and Jus­tice Min­is­ter De­vesh Ma­haraj flanked the AG but nei­ther spoke dur­ing the brief­ing.