Mixed reactions to PM’s SoE warning

KEVON FELMINE

Se­nior Re­porter

[email protected]

Con­sti­tu­tion­al at­tor­ney Gre­go­ry Delzin has warned that “be­hav­iour” can­not be used as the le­gal ba­sis for de­clar­ing an­oth­er State of Emer­gency (SoE), as de­bate in­ten­si­fies over Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar’s threat to reim­pose emer­gency pow­ers if vi­o­lence re­sumes.

While Per­sad-Bisses­sar re­tains the con­sti­tu­tion­al au­thor­i­ty to pro­claim an­oth­er SoE, Delzin said the law re­quires the ex­is­tence of an emer­gency sit­u­a­tion and does not per­mit de­c­la­ra­tions based sole­ly on whether crim­i­nals “be­have them­selves.”

Speak­ing to Guardian Me­dia yes­ter­day, Delzin said the Con­sti­tu­tion does not pro­hib­it suc­ces­sive States of Emer­gency but in­sist­ed that each must be jus­ti­fied by fresh cir­cum­stances that en­dan­ger pub­lic safe­ty.

Hours be­fore the SoE end­ed on Jan­u­ary 31, Per­sad-Bisses­sar is­sued a Face­book state­ment warn­ing gangs and re­cent­ly re­leased de­tainees that she would not hes­i­tate to act again if vi­o­lence re­turned.

She pledged to use every le­gal means to pro­tect law-abid­ing cit­i­zens and said the SoE, pre­ven­tive de­ten­tion or­ders and in­ter­na­tion­al bor­der as­sis­tance re­sult­ed in 257 few­er mur­ders in 2025 than the year be­fore.

The num­ber of de­tainees re­leased fol­low­ing the ex­pi­ra­tion of the State of Emer­gency (SoE) at mid­night yes­ter­day re­mains at 117.

Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Al­lis­ter Gue­var­ro con­firmed on Fri­day that, of the 36 in­di­vid­u­als for whom the po­lice have suf­fi­cient ev­i­dence, 16 have al­ready been charged but have not yet ap­peared in court.

The re­main­ing 20 are ex­pect­ed to be charged fol­low­ing the re­vo­ca­tion of their Pre­ven­tive De­ten­tion Or­ders (PDOs).

The of­fences they face in­clude firearm-re­lat­ed crimes, gang-re­lat­ed ac­tiv­i­ty and mo­tor-ve­hi­cle lar­ce­ny.

Delzin said the jus­ti­fi­ca­tion for the pre­vi­ous SoE was the Gov­ern­ment’s claim that con­di­tions in Trinidad and To­ba­go were like­ly to en­dan­ger pub­lic safe­ty.

He warned that pro­claim­ing an­oth­er one so soon af­ter would cre­ate a cred­i­bil­i­ty prob­lem for the State.

“If that was in fact the pur­pose of the last States of Emer­gency, if you de­clare a new one so close af­ter, what you are in ef­fect say­ing is that the last one failed and the ques­tion would then be for the pub­lic, what would be the pur­pose of the new State of Emer­gency if what­ev­er you did un­der the pre­vi­ous State of Emer­gency has worked,” Delzin said.

He not­ed that the Gov­ern­ment’s sim­ple ma­jor­i­ty in Par­lia­ment al­lows an SoE to be en­act­ed but does not pre­vent de­tainees from chal­leng­ing their de­ten­tion.

He al­so crit­i­cised Per­sad-Bisses­sar’s com­ments about im­pris­on­ing friends and fam­i­ly who al­leged­ly aid crim­i­nal­i­ty and do­ing every­thing legal­ly pos­si­ble to ter­rorise crim­i­nals and their fam­i­lies.

Delzin said the pow­ers of ar­rest and de­ten­tion un­der an SoE must be ex­er­cised for spe­cif­ic rea­sons backed by ev­i­dence be­fore be­ing placed be­fore the Min­is­ter of Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty.

“De­ten­tion and threat­en­ing peo­ple’s fam­i­lies and friends and so on has no place in pow­ers to be ex­er­cised by any min­is­ter in re­la­tion to a State of Emer­gency. That would be un­law­ful, and those per­sons will have a claim against the state for breach of their con­sti­tu­tion­al rights.”

He added that if an­oth­er SoE were de­clared and for­mer de­tainees were ar­rest­ed again, they would be en­ti­tled to ques­tion what new facts jus­ti­fied their de­ten­tion.

He said old ev­i­dence could not be reused be­cause it had be­come spent once the pre­vi­ous SoE end­ed.

Crim­i­nol­o­gist Dr Randy Seep­er­sad said the Prime Min­is­ter’s strong state­ments could still have a de­ter­rent ef­fect by sig­nalling that the po­lice re­tained the abil­i­ty to de­tain those sus­pect­ed of crim­i­nal ac­tiv­i­ty and in­car­cer­ate gang lead­ers and mem­bers.

“It means that the State of Emer­gency works through well-es­tab­lished mech­a­nisms that we know, and if the threat of that ex­ists or could be brought back to bear, then the crim­i­nal el­e­ments will more than like­ly think twice,” Seep­er­sad said.

He said if sta­tis­tics showed crime was ris­ing, the Prime Min­is­ter would be with­in her rights to de­clare an­oth­er SoE in the ab­sence of oth­er crime pre­ven­tion mea­sures.

Seep­er­sad urged the Gov­ern­ment to re­turn with the Zones of Spe­cial Op­er­a­tions Bill, de­scrib­ing it as a po­ten­tial game-chang­er.

He said it would al­low tight con­trol of high-crime ge­o­graph­ic ar­eas sup­port­ed by da­ta and cre­ate calm while in­tro­duc­ing in­ter­ven­tions such as so­cial work­ers, psy­chol­o­gists and ed­u­ca­tors.

Sev­enth Day Ad­ven­tist Pas­tor Clive Dot­tin al­so backed the ZOSO frame­work, say­ing he was con­cerned about what would fol­low the end of the SoE.

He de­scribed it as a bridge be­tween emer­gency rule and nor­mal polic­ing.

“I have been in­formed by sources I have learned to trust that the crim­i­nal el­e­ment does not plan to sit down. They do not plan to stop. They plan to con­tin­ue to cre­ate the may­hem and what have you, so that when the Prime Min­is­ter is­sues a warn­ing to them, that is what she had to do be­cause you do not have a bridge be­tween the State of Emer­gency and op­er­at­ing nor­mal­ly out of a State of Emer­gency,” Dot­tin said.

Mean­while, the Move­ment for So­cial Jus­tice con­demned Per­sad-Bisses­sar’s re­marks, ques­tion­ing how the State could jus­ti­fy ter­ror­is­ing the fam­i­lies of crim­i­nals who were not them­selves in­volved in crime.

At a vir­tu­al me­dia con­fer­ence yes­ter­day, po­lit­i­cal leader David Ab­du­lah said the Prime Min­is­ter could not take ac­tion against in­di­vid­u­als, as that was the re­spon­si­bil­i­ty of the po­lice.

The MSJ al­so crit­i­cised Per­sad-Bisses­sar’s dis­missal of what she called “tired, out­dat­ed woke, race-bait­ing, and big­ot­ed pro­pa­gan­da,” say­ing cit­i­zens’ rights were pro­tect­ed by the Con­sti­tu­tion and that she was sworn to up­hold the law.

When can a State of Emer­gency be pro­claimed?

A State of Emer­gency (SoE) can be pro­claimed by the Pres­i­dent on the ad­vice of the Prime Min­is­ter when­ev­er there is a threat to pub­lic safe­ty, es­sen­tial ser­vices or na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty.

This in­cludes sit­u­a­tions such as wide­spread crime, civ­il un­rest, war or nat­ur­al dis­as­ters.

An SoE ini­tial­ly lasts 15 days un­less re­voked, but Par­lia­ment may ex­tend it for up to three months at a time through a res­o­lu­tion sup­port­ed by a sim­ple ma­jor­i­ty in the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives.

Suc­ces­sive ex­ten­sions are per­mit­ted, but no ex­ten­sion may ex­ceed three months, and col­lec­tive­ly they can­not ex­ceed six months.

Legal­ly, there is no min­i­mum wait­ing pe­ri­od be­fore a new SoE can be de­clared, as the Con­sti­tu­tion al­lows the Prime Min­is­ter to ad­vise the Pres­i­dent when­ev­er cir­cum­stances war­rant, even if a pre­vi­ous SoE has just end­ed.