PM outlines Govt’s anti-crime plan in justifying SoE extension

Akash Sama­roo

Lead Ed­i­tor-Pol­i­tics

akash.sama­[email protected]

Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar says the Gov­ern­ment’s an­ti-crime plan is al­ready de­liv­er­ing mea­sur­able re­sults, but crim­i­nal syn­di­cates re­main suf­fi­cient­ly or­gan­ised and dan­ger­ous that au­thor­i­ties re­quire a fur­ther three months un­der the State of Emer­gency (SoE) to com­plete in­tel­li­gence-led op­er­a­tions and se­cure long-term gains.

Con­tribut­ing to Wednes­day’s par­lia­men­tary de­bate on the mo­tion to ex­tend the SoE, Per­sad-Bisses­sar re­ject­ed Op­po­si­tion Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM) claims that Gov­ern­ment’s crime-fight­ing strat­e­gy amount­ed to emer­gency pow­ers alone, in­sist­ing the SoE forms on­ly one com­po­nent of a broad­er an­ti-crime frame­work be­ing im­ple­ment­ed across mul­ti­ple min­istries.

“You asked me about the crime plan and I have to keep telling you we do not have a crime plan. We have an an­ti-crime plan,” she told the House.

The Prime Min­is­ter said the strat­e­gy com­bines leg­isla­tive re­form, en­hanced re­sources for the pro­tec­tive ser­vices, in­creased re­cruit­ment, in­ter­na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty part­ner­ships, in­tel­li­gence-shar­ing ini­tia­tives and sus­tain­able job cre­ation pro­grammes aimed at ad­dress­ing the root caus­es of crim­i­nal ac­tiv­i­ty.

On the leg­isla­tive front, she high­light­ed mea­sures, in­clud­ing the pro­posed Home In­va­sion Act, pa­role re­form, crim­i­nal records leg­is­la­tion and ini­tia­tives de­signed to re­duce re­cidi­vism.

“We have been work­ing from very ear­ly o’clock when we got here on the leg­isla­tive front,” Per­sad-Bisses­sar said, not­ing that ad­di­tion­al an­ti-crime leg­is­la­tion re­mains on Gov­ern­ment’s par­lia­men­tary agen­da.

She said re­sources had been in­creased for the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice, De­fence Force and Fire Ser­vice, while re­cruit­ment ef­forts con­tin­ued across the pro­tec­tive ser­vices. At the same time, au­thor­i­ties are strength­en­ing co­op­er­a­tion among lo­cal law en­force­ment agen­cies and work­ing with in­ter­na­tion­al part­ners to tar­get or­gan­ised crim­i­nal net­works.

Per­sad-Bisses­sar al­so point­ed to eco­nom­ic ini­tia­tives as a key pil­lar of the strat­e­gy.

“Part of our an­ti-crime plan in­cludes the cre­ation of sus­tain­able jobs to deal with crime in our coun­try,” she said, ar­gu­ing that mean­ing­ful em­ploy­ment op­por­tu­ni­ties of­fered a more last­ing so­lu­tion than tem­po­rary pro­grammes.

While de­fend­ing the wider an­ti-crime pro­gramme, the Prime Min­is­ter main­tained that the SoE re­mained nec­es­sary be­cause the threat posed by crim­i­nal or­gan­i­sa­tions had not yet been elim­i­nat­ed.

“The crim­i­nal syn­di­cates that im­per­il pub­lic or­der and men­ace the foun­da­tions of na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty have not yet been sub­dued,” she said.

“We are work­ing on that. They re­main em­bold­ened, they re­main or­gan­ised and they re­main pa­tient.”

She ar­gued that on­go­ing in­tel­li­gence-dri­ven in­ves­ti­ga­tions re­quired ad­di­tion­al time to iden­ti­fy, dis­rupt and pros­e­cute those re­spon­si­ble for or­ches­trat­ing vi­o­lent crime.

“To with­draw the mea­sures now pre­ma­ture­ly would be for us to sur­ren­der hard-won ground and im­per­a­tive in­ves­ti­ga­tions of sin­gu­lar na­tion­al im­por­tance,” she said.

Ac­cord­ing to the Prime Min­is­ter, the SoE was first de­clared fol­low­ing in­tel­li­gence re­ports of es­ca­lat­ing gang vi­o­lence, mass shoot­ings and cred­i­ble threats against mem­bers of the pro­tec­tive ser­vices.

Read­ing from Pres­i­dent Chris­tine Kan­ga­loo’s March 4 procla­ma­tion, she not­ed that Cab­i­net had in­formed the Pres­i­dent of vi­o­lent crim­i­nal in­ci­dents linked to or­gan­ised gangs, as well as threats against po­lice of­fi­cers, prison of­fi­cers and oth­er se­cu­ri­ty per­son­nel.

She ar­gued that those con­cerns re­main rel­e­vant to­day and warned that end­ing the emer­gency mea­sures pre­ma­ture­ly could al­low crim­i­nal groups to re­group and re­gain in­flu­ence.

While ac­knowl­edg­ing that States of Emer­gency should re­main tem­po­rary, Per­sad-Bisses­sar said the ex­ten­sion was nec­es­sary to con­sol­i­date gains al­ready achieved un­der the Gov­ern­ment’s an­ti-crime strat­e­gy.

She point­ed to sta­tis­tics pre­sent­ed dur­ing the de­bate show­ing sig­nif­i­cant de­clines in se­ri­ous crime since the in­tro­duc­tion of the emer­gency mea­sures, in­clud­ing what Gov­ern­ment de­scribed as a 42 per cent re­duc­tion in homi­cides.

“The em­pir­i­cal record speaks with un­mis­tak­able clar­i­ty,” she said.

“Vi­o­lent crime and gang-re­lat­ed ac­tiv­i­ty have mea­sur­ably re­ced­ed in the wake of the emer­gency pro­vi­sions.”

How­ev­er, she cau­tioned that au­thor­i­ties had not yet reached the point where the mea­sures could be safe­ly re­moved.

“Vul­ner­a­ble com­mu­ni­ties and coura­geous wit­ness­es still stand ex­posed to crim­i­nals,” she said.

“With­out the pro­tec­tive ar­chi­tec­ture the mea­sures un­der the SoE af­ford, crim­i­nal or­gan­i­sa­tions will re­con­sti­tute, will rearm and me­thod­i­cal­ly erase every gain we have been labour­ing to se­cure in Trinidad and To­ba­go.”

Per­sad-Bisses­sar said the ex­ten­sion must al­so be viewed against what she de­scribed as 25 years of vi­o­lent crime, cit­ing more than 10,000 mur­ders, thou­sands of rob­beries and over 20,000 re­port­ed rapes and sex­u­al as­saults dur­ing that pe­ri­od.

“The pro­tec­tion of law-abid­ing, God-fear­ing cit­i­zens of our coun­try from vi­o­lent threats su­per­sedes every sin­gle thing else,” she said.