Opposition MP dismisses current SoE as a failure

Shane Su­perville

Se­nior Re­porter

shane.su­[email protected]

De­spite a re­port­ed drop in sev­er­al cat­e­gories of crime, in­clud­ing mur­ders, Port-of-Spain South MP and for­mer Min­is­ter in the Min­istry of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Kei­th Scot­land has dis­missed the on­go­ing State of Emer­gency (SoE) as an “ab­ject fail­ure,” ar­gu­ing that vi­o­lent crime con­tin­ues de­spite the ex­tra­or­di­nary mea­sure.

Speak­ing with Guardian Me­dia on Thurs­day, Scot­land ques­tioned whether the con­tin­ued use of the SoE could be jus­ti­fied by a 13 per cent re­duc­tion in mur­ders.

He added that his as­sess­ment of the sit­u­a­tion is based on pub­lic per­cep­tion and lived ex­pe­ri­ence, say­ing, “More im­por­tant­ly, my yard­stick is do we feel that crime is un­der con­trol in Trinidad and To­ba­go and my view is that crime has now gone in spite of and in light of a State of Emer­gency.”

Scot­land ac­knowl­edged that vi­o­lent crime has been a long­stand­ing chal­lenge across suc­ces­sive ad­min­is­tra­tions, not­ing that one of the high­est mur­der tolls was record­ed un­der the then Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM) gov­ern­ment in 2024. How­ev­er, he main­tained that re­spon­si­bil­i­ty now rests with the cur­rent ad­min­is­tra­tion.

“I am of the view that State of Emer­gency has been an ab­ject fail­ure and I ask the cit­i­zens of Trinidad and To­ba­go, do you feel safer, and the an­swer is no,” he said.

His com­ments come amid con­trast­ing fig­ures pre­sent­ed by Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Al­lis­ter Gue­var­ro, who re­port­ed that mur­ders fell to 370 in 2025—the low­est since 2011—along­side broad­er de­clines in se­ri­ous and vi­o­lent crime.

Gue­var­ro quot­ed sev­er­al fig­ures from the po­lice Crime and Prob­lem Analy­sis (CA­PA) branch dur­ing his fea­ture ad­dress at Con­ver­sa­tions with the Com­mis­sion­er, fo­rum at the T&T Cham­ber of Com­merce, West­moor­ings, on Thurs­day, where he re­port­ed that there were drops in Se­ri­ous Re­port­ed Crimes (SRCs) and vi­o­lent crimes across sev­er­al po­lice di­vi­sions.

He re­port­ed that the num­ber of homi­cides dropped by 42 per cent when com­pared to the fi­nal fig­ure of 2024 where 626 mur­ders were re­port­ed.

Ad­di­tion­al­ly, he not­ed that based on fig­ures pre­sent­ed at the TTPS Comp­stat meet­ing on Tues­day, this year’s fig­ures con­tin­ued to trend down­ward with a 13 per cent drop in mur­ders.

He lament­ed that de­spite these de­clines, the fear of crime per­sists, which he blamed on per­sons on so­cial me­dia whom he ac­cused of hav­ing an agen­da.

De­scrib­ing these de­trac­tors as “key­board war­riors,” Gue­var­ro said these peo­ple were un­will­ing to give cred­it to the TTPS even when im­prove­ments in crime and pub­lic safe­ty were clear.

Gue­var­ro ar­gued that the fear and pan­ic sur­round­ing crime was just as bad as crime it­self, as he ques­tioned why some peo­ple were so re­luc­tant to be­lieve that the TTPS crime re­duc­tion ef­forts were bear­ing fruit.

Re­fer­ring to crit­ics who raised con­cerns over the ef­fi­ca­cy of the on­go­ing SoE, Gue­var­ro chal­lenged them to state their own ev­i­dence as to why they felt the reg­u­la­tions were un­suc­cess­ful.

“We, the TTPS, are able to utilise the ex­tra pow­ers giv­en to us by the SoE to take a few of them (crim­i­nals) off the street and look at the re­sults you are see­ing in front of you.

“These are not the re­sults of fail­ure, they are the re­sults of pres­sure, dis­rup­tion and re­lent­less en­force­ment, so when next you hear some­one say the SoE has failed, ask them this... failed ac­cord­ing to whom? Ac­cord­ing to what ev­i­dence? Be­cause the sta­tis­tics tell a dif­fer­ent sto­ry.”

Notwith­stand­ing these fig­ures, Gue­var­ro ac­knowl­edged that the po­lice re­al­is­ti­cal­ly could not be ex­pect­ed to pre­vent every mur­der, not­ing that giv­en the un­pre­dictable na­ture of hu­man be­hav­iour, some peo­ple would in­evitably be killed.

When con­tact­ed for com­ment, crim­i­nol­o­gist Dr Randy Seep­er­sad cor­rob­o­rat­ed the da­ta shared by Gue­var­ro and con­firmed that de­clines have been ob­served in dif­fer­ent types of crime.

He, how­ev­er, not­ed that there was a dis­con­nect be­tween em­pir­i­cal da­ta and the lin­ger­ing fear among cit­i­zens, as he called for more clar­i­ty and ro­bust re­port­ing mech­a­nisms by the TTPS or the Min­istry of Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty.

Dr Seep­er­sad not­ed that while da­ta was usu­al­ly avail­able on the TTPS web­site, he said re­al­is­ti­cal­ly the layper­son would not take the time to ac­cess and dis­ag­gre­gate the in­for­ma­tion to form their opin­ion, as he felt that the onus was on the au­thor­i­ties to pro­vide di­rect, point­ed analy­sis to shape pub­lic opin­ion.

When asked about the pos­si­bil­i­ty that the da­ta pre­sent­ed did not re­flect the ac­tu­al num­ber due to un­der­re­port­ing, Seep­er­sad ad­mit­ted that the ac­tu­al fig­ure of crime may like­ly be much high­er than what was pre­sent­ed, but felt that this was more preva­lent with cer­tain cat­e­gories of crime com­pared to oth­ers.

“If you look at some of the re­cent sur­veys, even right here in Trinidad and To­ba­go, we would see that the rate of sex­u­al of­fences is about sev­en times high­er than is re­port­ed in of­fi­cial crime sta­tis­tics, and the rate of do­mes­tic vi­o­lence is about eight times high­er than is re­port­ed in of­fi­cial po­lice sta­tis­tics.

“The re­al­i­ty is peo­ple’s ex­pe­ri­ences with crime, whether or not they are re­port­ed, will af­fect their lev­el of fear, so it’s cer­tain­ly some­thing that has to be tak­en in­to ac­count when we look at peo­ple’s lev­el of fear.”

Se­ri­ous Re­port­ed Crimes: 30% re­duc­tion – dropped from 3,413 in 2025 to 2,397

Vi­o­lent Crimes: 32% re­duc­tion – dropped from 1,219 in 2025 to 829

Di­vi­sion­al crime re­duc­tion in SRCs

- North East­ern Di­vi­sion had a 55 per cent re­duc­tion

- To­ba­go Di­vi­sion had a 41 per cent re­duc­tion

- East­ern Di­vi­sion had a 40 per cent re­duc­tion

- North­ern Di­vi­sion had a 40 per cent re­duc­tion

- Cen­tral Di­vi­sion had a 34 per cent re­duc­tion

- South­ern Di­vi­sion had a 32 per cent re­duc­tion