Sampson wants Farley consulted before curfews, closed areas in Tobago

KEVON FELMINE & AKASH SAMA­ROO

To­ba­go West MP Joel Samp­son wants the Prime Min­is­ter or rel­e­vant na­tion­al au­thor­i­ty to con­sult To­ba­go’s Chief Sec­re­tary be­fore de­clar­ing any To­ba­go com­mu­ni­ty a closed area or im­pos­ing a cur­few un­der the pro­posed Spe­cial Op­er­a­tions leg­is­la­tion.

Samp­son, who sup­port­ed the Spe­cial Op­er­a­tions Bill 2026 dur­ing de­bate in the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives on Fri­day, said the To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly (THA) should have a for­mal role when ex­tra­or­di­nary se­cu­ri­ty mea­sures af­fect the is­land and its res­i­dents.

While the THA has no au­thor­i­ty over polic­ing, Samp­son said it should be in­volved be­cause its re­spon­si­bil­i­ties in­clude health, emer­gency man­age­ment, schools, so­cial ser­vices, in­fra­struc­ture, trans­porta­tion and com­mu­ni­ty de­vel­op­ment.

“A spe­cial op­er­a­tion could af­fect ac­cess to health cen­tres, schools, work­places, ports, tourism fa­cil­i­ties, pub­lic trans­porta­tion, food sup­plies, and emer­gency ser­vices,” Samp­son said.

He pro­posed that where cir­cum­stances per­mit, the Chief Sec­re­tary be con­sult­ed be­fore a de­c­la­ra­tion. If ad­vance con­sul­ta­tion is im­pos­si­ble be­cause of ur­gency or op­er­a­tional sen­si­tiv­i­ty, he said the Chief Sec­re­tary should be con­fi­den­tial­ly no­ti­fied as soon as prac­ti­ca­ble af­ter­wards.

His com­ments came as the Spe­cial Op­er­a­tions Bill, 2026 was passed in the House fol­low­ing a marathon sit­ting, with At­tor­ney Gen­er­al John Je­re­mie say­ing the Gov­ern­ment is not promis­ing per­fec­tion from its lat­est crime-fight­ing mea­sure but will con­sid­er it a suc­cess if it de­liv­ers a steady and sus­tained re­duc­tion in vi­o­lent crime.

The Bill was passed short­ly af­ter mid­night on Sat­ur­day, af­ter the House sat for more than 13 hours on Fri­day.

The leg­is­la­tion, which re­places the Gov­ern­ment’s de­feat­ed Zones of Spe­cial Op­er­a­tions (ZOSO) Bill, es­tab­lish­es sev­en polic­ing dis­tricts across Trinidad and To­ba­go and cre­ates a frame­work for spe­cial op­er­a­tions to com­bat crim­i­nal ac­tiv­i­ty.

With­in those dis­tricts, spe­cif­ic lo­ca­tions can be de­clared “closed ar­eas”, where en­hanced law en­force­ment pow­ers can be ex­er­cised for lim­it­ed pe­ri­ods. Those pow­ers in­clude cur­fews, cor­dons, check­points, road clo­sures, re­stric­tions on en­try and ex­it and, in spec­i­fied cir­cum­stances, search­es with­out war­rants.

Je­re­mie said the ul­ti­mate ob­jec­tive was a re­turn to peace, while ac­knowl­edg­ing that no piece of leg­is­la­tion could com­plete­ly erad­i­cate crime.

“Suc­cess looks like the state which I de­scribed in my open­ing. It is a re­turn to peace and the recog­ni­tion that there is no per­fec­tion on earth,” Je­re­mie said.

“A con­tin­u­ing re­duc­tion in the lev­els of vi­o­lent crim­i­nal ac­tiv­i­ty in our coun­try is what we seek.”

Samp­son said the bill’s recog­ni­tion of To­ba­go as Dis­trict Sev­en was sig­nif­i­cant be­cause of the is­land’s ge­og­ra­phy, pop­u­la­tion dis­tri­b­u­tion, trans­porta­tion net­work and se­cu­ri­ty en­vi­ron­ment.

He said To­ba­go faced risks be­yond con­ven­tion­al vi­o­lent crime, in­clud­ing the move­ment of il­le­gal firearms, nar­cotics and peo­ple through its ter­ri­to­r­i­al wa­ters.

Samp­son warned that To­ba­go was “at risk of be­ing in­cor­po­rat­ed in­to a wider re­gion­al net­work of or­gan­ised crim­i­nal ac­tiv­i­ty” and could be­come a stor­age, tran­ship­ment, re­fu­elling or re­cruit­ment point for re­gion­al crim­i­nal or­gan­i­sa­tions.

But he stressed that his sup­port for the leg­is­la­tion was not a call for a per­ma­nent­ly mil­i­tarised is­land.

“I do not sup­port this leg­is­la­tion be­cause I de­sire a mil­i­tarised To­ba­go. I sup­port it be­cause I refuse to ac­cept a crim­i­nalised To­ba­go.”

Samp­son al­so cau­tioned against the in­dis­crim­i­nate use of the pow­ers avail­able un­der the bill, say­ing pover­ty, un­em­ploy­ment, youth or res­i­dence in a par­tic­u­lar com­mu­ni­ty could not be treat­ed as ev­i­dence of crim­i­nal­i­ty.

Je­re­mie said the Gov­ern­ment had dis­cus­sions with To­ba­go’s rep­re­sen­ta­tives, and there were non-leg­isla­tive so­lu­tions that would al­low the is­sues to be set­tled through dis­cus­sion as part­ners.