Former senior cops warn of gang war risk after SoE ends

KEVON FELMINE

Se­nior Re­porter

[email protected]

With scores of de­tainees re­gain­ing their free­dom fol­low­ing the end of the State of Emer­gency (SoE), two for­mer se­nior po­lice of­fi­cials have warned that the coun­try faces an in­creased risk of gang reprisals and re­newed vi­o­lence.

The SoE end­ed last night, trig­ger­ing the re­lease of 117 peo­ple held un­der Pre­ven­tive De­ten­tion Or­ders (PDO). Guardian Me­dia was told that 151 PDOs were ex­e­cut­ed, while 50 were not be­cause the sus­pects had “gone un­der­ground”. Of the 36 peo­ple against whom po­lice have ev­i­dence, 16 have al­ready been charged but are yet to ap­pear be­fore a court, and an­oth­er 20 are ex­pect­ed to be charged now that their de­ten­tion or­ders have been re­voked. The of­fences in­clude firearm-re­lat­ed crimes, gang ac­tiv­i­ty and mo­tor ve­hi­cle lar­ce­ny.

For­mer po­lice com­mis­sion­er Gary Grif­fith said the sit­u­a­tion mir­rors what oc­curred when the SoE end­ed in 2011, when there was a mas­sive re­duc­tion in crime.

Speak­ing to the Sun­day Guardian yes­ter­day, Grif­fith said the SoE al­lows au­thor­i­ties to in­car­cer­ate gang lead­ers, lieu­tenants, as­sas­sins, shoot­ers, snipers, drug lords and weapons deal­ers, cre­at­ing a calm that can dis­ap­pear once de­tainees re­turn to the streets.

“When you hold 100 or 200 of them, ob­vi­ous­ly, crime will go down. Un­for­tu­nate­ly, when these per­sons are re­leased, many of them would have lost their turf; they would have lost their con­tract with the State. Oth­er gang mem­bers would have tak­en over from them, and then comes some war, an in­ter­nal civ­il gang war. There be­comes clash be­tween gangs. There be­comes reprisal, re­tal­i­a­tion and re­venge, so with that, there could usu­al­ly be a spike,” Grif­fith said.

He main­tained there would be no need for emer­gency pow­ers if the Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice and the Min­istry of Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty con­sis­tent­ly im­ple­ment­ed pro­grammes, poli­cies, sys­tems, units, and tech­nol­o­gy as was done in 2014, when se­ri­ous crime fell sig­nif­i­cant­ly.

He not­ed that the mur­der fig­ures in that year were sim­i­lar to those record­ed in 2021 and 2025.

“Laws stand­ing on their own can­not re­duce crime. When you put the laws, they must be im­ple­ment­ed and es­tab­lished by op­er­a­tional poli­cies, and in the ab­sence of these poli­cies, we would be at the mer­cy of the crim­i­nal el­e­ments.”

An­oth­er for­mer ex­ec­u­tive of the Po­lice Ser­vice, who asked not to be named, said in­tel­li­gence-build­ing re­mains the most im­por­tant tool in deal­ing with for­mer de­tainees and or­gan­ised crime net­works.

“The out­come of an SoE is not just based on how many peo­ple were ar­rest­ed, how many de­tained and af­ter the de­tained, whether they were charged. It is not the on­ly mea­sure­ment. An­oth­er mea­sure­ment is the ab­stract things that the po­lice gain, which they can­not talk about with the pop­u­la­tion,” the re­tiree said.

He said de­ten­tion al­lows in­ves­ti­ga­tors time to col­lect in­for­ma­tion and dis­rupt crim­i­nal op­er­a­tions, even if charges are not im­me­di­ate­ly laid.

The pause in vi­o­lence, he added, cre­ates space for strate­gic plan­ning.

The re­tiree warned that the re­lease of de­tainees in­evitably car­ries risks, but said it was not the first time the coun­try had faced such a tran­si­tion.

“That comes nat­u­ral­ly,” he said, adding that with­out rein­te­gra­tion and sup­port pro­grammes, the same in­di­vid­u­als and com­mu­ni­ties re­main vul­ner­a­ble. He said de­ten­tion alone does not elim­i­nate the threat to po­ten­tial vic­tims.

He urged the po­lice to im­prove their abil­i­ty to mon­i­tor and track them.