The Gov­ern­ment of Trinidad and To­ba­go has de­clared a State of Emer­gency fol­low­ing con­fir­ma­tion of a co­or­di­nat­ed and dan­ger­ous crim­i­nal net­work op­er­at­ing from with­in the na­tion’s prison sys­tem.

The move fol­lows a for­mal rec­om­men­da­tion from Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice Al­lis­ter Gue­var­ro, who cit­ed cred­i­ble in­tel­li­gence that in­car­cer­at­ed in­di­vid­u­als are lever­ag­ing in­ter­nal and ex­ter­nal con­nec­tions to or­ches­trate at­tacks on se­nior po­lice of­fi­cers, ju­di­cial fig­ures, per­son­nel with­in the Of­fice of the Di­rec­tor of Pub­lic Pros­e­cu­tions, and prison of­fi­cers.

Of­fi­cials say the cam­paign is struc­tured and in­volves mul­ti­ple crim­i­nal el­e­ments work­ing in con­cert, with a lev­el of plan­ning and ex­e­cu­tion that sur­pass­es the ca­pa­bil­i­ty of con­ven­tion­al law en­force­ment re­spons­es.