Jessie Ramdeo

At­tor­ney Gen­er­al John Je­re­mie on Fri­day led de­bate in the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives on a mo­tion to ex­tend the State of Emer­gency (SoE) for an­oth­er three months, say­ing the mea­sure re­mains a vi­tal tool in the State’s ef­forts to dis­man­tle crim­i­nal gangs and dis­rupt or­gan­ised crime net­works.

Je­re­mie said the SoE should not be viewed as the gov­ern­ment’s crime-fight­ing plan, but as a tar­get­ed re­sponse de­signed to sup­port law en­force­ment agen­cies en­gaged in sen­si­tive an­ti-gang op­er­a­tions. He ex­plained that se­cu­ri­ty agen­cies had re­quest­ed the ex­ten­sion to main­tain the mo­men­tum of on­go­ing op­er­a­tions, warn­ing that end­ing the emer­gency mea­sures pre­ma­ture­ly could un­der­mine months of in­tel­li­gence-gath­er­ing and en­force­ment work.