Police deny SoE stopped Baptist march

RAD­HI­CA DE SIL­VA

Se­nior Mul­ti­me­dia Re­porter

rad­hi­[email protected]

Spir­i­tu­al Bap­tists claim they were de­nied ap­proval to host a planned march in San Fer­nan­do, ini­tial­ly be­liev­ing the on­go­ing State of Emer­gency (SoE) may have been a fac­tor.

How­ev­er, po­lice have since clar­i­fied that the de­ci­sion was due to a late ap­pli­ca­tion, not SoE re­stric­tions.

The clar­i­fi­ca­tion came as mem­bers of the faith pre­pared to com­mem­o­rate a sig­nif­i­cant mile­stone—75 years since the re­peal of the 1917 Shouter Pro­hi­bi­tion Or­di­nance, which once out­lawed their re­li­gious prac­tices.

King Shep­herd Ray Brath­waite, head of the Na­tion­al Con­gress of In­cor­po­rat­ed Spir­i­tu­al Bap­tist Or­gan­i­sa­tions of Trinidad and To­ba­go, told Guardian Me­dia that the group had in­tend­ed to host prayers fol­lowed by a march from the Bap­tist Mon­u­ment on Carib Street.

How­ev­er, they were un­able to se­cure the nec­es­sary po­lice per­mis­sion.

Brath­waite said that while it was not de­fin­i­tive­ly con­firmed that the SoE played a role in the de­nial, that was the ex­pla­na­tion ini­tial­ly com­mu­ni­cat­ed to them. He ac­knowl­edged, how­ev­er, that the or­gan­i­sa­tion pressed ahead with its ob­ser­vances in a mod­i­fied for­mat.

“We de­cid­ed to con­tin­ue spir­i­tu­al­ly,” he said, not­ing that a way­side ser­vice was held on Har­ris Prom­e­nade as a sym­bol­ic launch of a week of re­li­gious ac­tiv­i­ties.

This year’s com­mem­o­ra­tion is be­ing held un­der the theme “Let free­dom reign,” which Brath­waite said re­flects both the hard­ships en­dured un­der colo­nial rule and the re­li­gious free­doms now en­joyed. He point­ed out that where Spir­i­tu­al Bap­tists were once sup­pressed by au­thor­i­ties, they are to­day pro­tect­ed by law en­force­ment.

He added that mem­bers of the faith have con­sis­tent­ly con­tributed to na­tion­al de­vel­op­ment through prayer and out­reach, par­tic­u­lar­ly in ad­dress­ing crime and oth­er so­cial chal­lenges af­fect­ing com­mu­ni­ties.

A se­ries of events is sched­uled through­out the week at the or­gan­i­sa­tion’s head­quar­ters in Bal­main, Cou­va. Brath­waite said these in­clude themed nights ded­i­cat­ed to youth, men, women and mem­bers of the di­as­po­ra, all aimed at strength­en­ing faith and uni­ty with­in the Spir­i­tu­al Bap­tist com­mu­ni­ty.

Un­der the cur­rent SoE, which was de­clared on March 2, 2026, there are no ex­plic­it pro­vi­sions ban­ning pub­lic march­es or as­sem­blies.

How­ev­er, the Emer­gency Pow­ers Reg­u­la­tions, 2026, grant wide-rang­ing au­thor­i­ty to the Gov­ern­ment and the Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice to man­age pub­lic safe­ty.

Reg­u­la­tion 4(1)(f) al­lows the Com­mis­sion­er to re­quire in­di­vid­u­als to leave or avoid spe­cif­ic ar­eas, ef­fec­tive­ly pro­vid­ing the le­gal ba­sis to re­strict or pre­vent gath­er­ings, in­clud­ing march­es, where deemed nec­es­sary.

De­spite this, po­lice main­tain that the de­nial of the Bap­tist march was not re­lat­ed to the SoE.

South­ern Di­vi­sion Su­per­in­ten­dent Richard Bertie said the re­quest for per­mis­sion was sub­mit­ted late on Thurs­day evening—less than 48 hours be­fore the pro­posed event—leav­ing in­suf­fi­cient time for of­fi­cers to con­duct route in­spec­tions and com­plete re­quired se­cu­ri­ty as­sess­ments.

Bertie ex­plained that es­tab­lished pro­ce­dures re­quire ap­pli­ca­tions for pub­lic march­es to be sub­mit­ted at least eight days in ad­vance to al­low for prop­er plan­ning and co­or­di­na­tion.

He said po­lice en­gaged with a rep­re­sen­ta­tive of the or­gan­i­sa­tion to out­line the re­quire­ments and con­straints.

“Even though they made a late re­quest, we ap­proved them to have their day of prayer,” Bertie not­ed.

He added that had the ap­pli­ca­tion been sub­mit­ted with­in the re­quired time­frame, there would like­ly have been no is­sue grant­i­ng ap­proval for the march.