Business groups back Special Operations Bill: Give it a chance

SHAL­IZA HAS­SANALI

Se­nior Re­porter

shal­iza.has­[email protected]

Mere hours af­ter the Spe­cial Op­er­a­tions Bill passed in the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives, busi­ness groups ap­plaud­ed the leg­is­la­tion, say­ing they won’t knock it be­fore they see its suc­cess.

Pres­i­dent of the San Juan Busi­ness As­so­ci­a­tion Abrahim Ali ex­pressed con­cern re­gard­ing the coun­try’s grow­ing crime rate, which he said has been dif­fi­cult to curb de­spite the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice’s ef­forts.

Ali ad­mit­ted that San Juan has a few crime hot spots ar­eas which the po­lice must make safe again, us­ing the right tools, re­sources and ap­proach.

He said this bill was long over­due.

“We wel­come it.”

Ali said he hopes the Up­per House will al­so sup­port the Bill.

Al­though the leg­is­la­tion may have reper­cus­sions for the busi­ness sec­tor, Ali said, “We reach the point where we know that dras­tic mea­sures are need­ed to deal with crime in our coun­try. If we don’t take the bull by its horns, we will not be able to deal with it, and it will con­tin­ue to run away.”

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

The leg­is­la­tion re­placed the Gov­ern­ment’s de­feat­ed Zones of Spe­cial Op­er­a­tions (ZOSO) Bill, es­tab­lish­ing sev­en polic­ing dis­tricts across Trinidad and To­ba­go.

It 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. Ari­ma Busi­ness As­so­ci­a­tion pres­i­dent Sudesh Ramkissoon said that, com­ing out of the State of Emer­gency (SoE), the Gov­ern­ment has moved ex­pe­di­tious­ly to have the bill passed in an at­tempt to keep the crim­i­nals un­der con­trol.

“If this could help re­store some faith in the sys­tem and get us mov­ing in the right di­rec­tion and peo­ple feel they can move freely again, this is what we need. It starts from here.”

The ob­jec­tive, he said, is to tar­get crim­i­nals who have been cre­at­ing fear and pan­ic among law-abid­ing cit­i­zens.

While Ramkissoon ap­plaud­ed the bill, he said the po­lice must en­sure they don’t abuse their pow­ers or make the coun­try a po­lice state.

“So it means give it some time, see where it car­ries us and if it has suc­cess and we see good things are hap­pen­ing, then we have to ap­plaud it.”

If this fails to work, Ramkissoon said the Gov­ern­ment would have to go back to the draw­ing board and try some­thing new. Pres­i­dent of the Greater San Fer­nan­do Cham­ber of Com­merce Ki­ran Singh be­lieves the leg­is­la­tion would have a pos­i­tive im­pact on the busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty, stat­ing that for years they have been ap­peal­ing for a high­er po­lice vis­i­bil­i­ty in South Trinidad, due to grow­ing crime.

“We think that it would im­prove our op­er­a­tions, ca­pa­bil­i­ty and the po­lice would be more at­ten­tive to the needs not on­ly to the busi­ness­peo­ple but so­ci­ety as a whole.”

He said the busi­ness sec­tor has been look­ing at the leg­is­la­tion as an­oth­er strat­e­gy that can work.

“We want to give it a chance to see the roll­out of it be­fore be­ing neg­a­tive about the whole thing. Let us see if it can work first.” Pres­i­dent of the Down­town Own­ers and Mer­chants As­so­ci­a­tion Gre­go­ry Aboud said the bill is an “im­prove­ment of the sit­u­a­tion that ex­ist­ed with the pre­vi­ous SoE.”

“So as far as we are con­cerned, the Gov­ern­ment has made an ef­fort to try and an­swer the con­cerns that have been pre­vi­ous­ly ad­dressed.”

How­ev­er, Aboud said we need to be aware of the fact that “the po­lice do not seem able to man­age law and or­der in a coun­try with­out en­hanced au­thor­i­ty and spe­cial pow­ers as per this new bill.”