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De­fence at­tor­ney Steven Maw­er is ques­tion­ing why his teenage client was is­sued a Pre­ven­tive De­ten­tion Or­der (PDO) in­stead of be­ing charged with pos­ses­sion of a firearm found at a house he and oth­ers were at two weeks ago.

Maw­er said his 16-year-old client, who was held on March 7, spent nine days at the Mara­cas St Joseph Po­lice Sta­tion with­out be­ing ques­tioned about the firearm or any al­leged gang in­volve­ment, de­spite claims in the PDO.

The on­go­ing State of Emer­gency (SoE) was de­clared by the Gov­ern­ment to ad­dress ris­ing gang ac­tiv­i­ties. At a me­dia brief­ing last Fri­day, Gold Com­man­der DCP Suzette Mar­tin said 39 peo­ple had been held un­der PDOs, with 16 ap­proved at the time. To date, none of these PDOs have been gazetted.