Security first!

Akash Sama­roo

Lead Ed­i­tor-Pol­i­tics

akash.sama­[email protected]

The Gov­ern­ment is de­fend­ing the ex­tra­or­di­nary pow­ers con­tained in the Spe­cial Op­er­a­tions Bill, ar­gu­ing that the pub­lic’s in­ter­est in peace and or­der out­weighs any lim­it­ed in­fringe­ment of in­di­vid­ual rights and in­sist­ing the mea­sures are aimed sole­ly at what De­fence Min­is­ter Wayne Sturge de­scribed as the “ban­dit class.”

Pi­lot­ing the leg­is­la­tion in the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives yes­ter­day, At­tor­ney Gen­er­al John Je­re­mie ac­knowl­edged some pro­vi­sions could af­fect con­sti­tu­tion­al rights but main­tained any re­stric­tions would be “rea­son­able and pro­por­tion­ate.”

“We have ex­am­ined the con­sti­tu­tion­al­i­ty of the pro­posed leg­isla­tive mea­sures and we con­sid­er that the in­ter­ests of the pop­u­la­tion in peace and or­der trumps the rel­e­vant in­di­vid­ual rights that might pos­si­bly be in­fringed by the pro­posed mea­sures,” Je­re­mie told the House.

The AG said this rea­son­ing al­so in­formed the Gov­ern­ment’s de­ci­sion to seek pas­sage of the leg­is­la­tion by a sim­ple ma­jor­i­ty, un­like the pre­vi­ous­ly de­feat­ed Zones of Spe­cial Op­er­a­tions (ZOSO) Bill, which ex­press­ly in­voked Sec­tion 13 of the Con­sti­tu­tion and re­quired a three-fifths ma­jor­i­ty.

Je­re­mie iden­ti­fied the rights po­ten­tial­ly af­fect­ed as in­clud­ing lib­er­ty, en­joy­ment of prop­er­ty, re­spect for pri­vate and fam­i­ly life and free­dom of move­ment.

“Our view is that any such in­fringe­ment is rea­son­able and pro­por­tion­ate,” he said.

Cit­ing the Privy Coun­cil de­ci­sions in Suraj and Suratt, Je­re­mie ar­gued that not every law af­fect­ing fun­da­men­tal rights re­quires a spe­cial ma­jor­i­ty, pro­vid­ed it serves a le­git­i­mate ob­jec­tive and sat­is­fies the test of pro­por­tion­al­i­ty. He ac­knowl­edged, how­ev­er, that leg­is­la­tion passed by a sim­ple ma­jor­i­ty faces a high­er bur­den of jus­ti­fi­ca­tion if chal­lenged in court.

De­fend­ing the en­hanced pow­ers pro­posed in the bill, Sturge stressed that they were not in­tend­ed to tar­get law-abid­ing cit­i­zens but a small mi­nor­i­ty re­spon­si­ble for vi­o­lent crime.

“These are se­ri­ous times. It calls for se­ri­ous mea­sures,” Sturge said, adding that if re­duc­ing crime re­quired “lim­it­ing the right of a small num­ber of the crim­i­nal class so that the law-abid­ing can con­tin­ue to live,” the Gov­ern­ment be­lieved that ap­proach was jus­ti­fied.

Through­out his con­tri­bu­tion, Sturge re­peat­ed­ly re­ferred to those tar­get­ed by the leg­is­la­tion as the “ban­dit class,” say­ing the mea­sures were in­tend­ed to dis­rupt crim­i­nal el­e­ments rather than im­pose re­stric­tions on the wider pop­u­la­tion.

“What we are do­ing is we are look­ing to tar­get a mi­nor­i­ty of peo­ple who are caus­ing may­hem,” he said.

Sturge not­ed that even with­in a de­clared closed area, res­i­dents could not be ar­rest­ed sim­ply be­cause they lived there. Po­lice of­fi­cers, he said, would still need rea­son­able sus­pi­cion that a per­son had com­mit­ted, was com­mit­ting or was about to com­mit an of­fence.

“So not the shop­keep­er. Not the lit­tle child who had to go to school,” he said.

Je­re­mie sim­i­lar­ly ar­gued that the leg­is­la­tion was de­signed to “tar­get gangs and crim­i­nals, not law-abid­ing cit­i­zens.”

The bill di­vides Trinidad and To­ba­go in­to sev­en per­ma­nent polic­ing dis­tricts and em­pow­ers the Pres­i­dent, once spec­i­fied con­di­tions are met, to des­ig­nate lo­ca­tions with­in those dis­tricts as “closed ar­eas.”

With­in such ar­eas, se­cu­ri­ty forces would be grant­ed en­hanced pow­ers, in­clud­ing war­rant­less search­es based on rea­son­able sus­pi­cion, search and seizure, cor­dons, cur­fews, ar­rests and de­ten­tion.

How­ev­er, Je­re­mie said the leg­is­la­tion was “re­plete” with safe­guards in­tend­ed to en­sure those pow­ers are ex­er­cised pro­por­tion­ate­ly.

Among the safe­guards are manda­to­ry train­ing for of­fi­cers in­volved in spe­cial op­er­a­tions, month­ly op­er­a­tional re­ports and an an­nu­al re­port to Par­lia­ment, joint po­lice-mil­i­tary pro­to­cols and stan­dard op­er­at­ing pro­ce­dures, par­lia­men­tary over­sight of closed-area de­c­la­ra­tions, per­mits to fa­cil­i­tate move­ment dur­ing cor­dons and cur­fews, re­stric­tions on search and seizure, ju­di­cial over­sight of de­ten­tion and pro­vi­sions re­quir­ing the use of body-worn cam­eras.

The bill al­so con­tains a two-year sun­set clause.

Je­re­mie said the Pres­i­dent would not be able to de­clare an area closed ar­bi­trar­i­ly. Be­fore do­ing so, he said the Pres­i­dent must be sat­is­fied on rea­son­able grounds that pub­lic safe­ty and peace are un­der threat be­cause of fac­tors such as es­ca­lat­ing vi­o­lent or gun-re­lat­ed crime, the pres­ence of il­le­gal firearms, or gang con­trol and in­tim­i­da­tion, and that or­di­nary law-en­force­ment mea­sures are in­suf­fi­cient.

The Pres­i­dent must pro­vide Par­lia­ment with the rea­sons for any de­c­la­ra­tion with­in sev­en days. De­c­la­ra­tions may al­so be re­voked by the Pres­i­dent or an­nulled by the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives.

The leg­is­la­tion fur­ther pro­vides sev­er­al lay­ers of ju­di­cial over­sight for de­ten­tion.

Where a per­son re­mains in cus­tody for more than 36 hours with­out the re­quired court or­der, the of­fi­cer in charge must no­ti­fy an of­fi­cer of at least as­sis­tant su­per­in­ten­dent rank, who is re­quired to in­ves­ti­gate the cir­cum­stances and en­sure the de­tainee is brought im­me­di­ate­ly be­fore a mag­is­trate.

Sturge said a mag­is­trate would de­ter­mine whether con­tin­ued de­ten­tion was jus­ti­fied and, where an ex­ten­sion is sought, the mat­ter would ul­ti­mate­ly be con­sid­ered by a High Court judge.

“This is not the Gov­ern­ment say­ing you have to be de­tained for a cer­tain pe­ri­od of time. This is the court say­ing we are su­per­vis­ing it.”

The bill al­so guar­an­tees ac­cess to le­gal coun­sel, med­ical treat­ment, food, wel­fare items and vis­its from a spouse or fam­i­ly mem­ber.

Je­re­mie said the safe­guards sup­port the Gov­ern­ment’s po­si­tion that the leg­is­la­tion strikes an ap­pro­pri­ate bal­ance be­tween en­hanced se­cu­ri­ty pow­ers and con­sti­tu­tion­al pro­tec­tions.

“We will build a na­tion of peace where the weak are safe and the strong are just,” he said in clos­ing.

Sturge al­so de­fend­ed pro­vi­sions gov­ern­ing body-worn cam­eras, ar­gu­ing that of­fi­cers can­not rea­son­ably be ex­pect­ed to keep cam­eras ac­ti­vat­ed dur­ing every mo­ment of an op­er­a­tion.

The bill states that po­lice of­fi­cers and De­fence Force mem­bers en­gaged in spe­cial op­er­a­tions with­in closed ar­eas must use body-worn cam­eras “as far as is pos­si­ble hav­ing re­gard to avail­able re­sources.”

Sturge said there may be oc­ca­sions when of­fi­cers need to de­ac­ti­vate cam­eras while gath­er­ing in­for­ma­tion from res­i­dents who fear be­ing record­ed.

“When you’re in a neigh­bour­hood, the po­lice go there, they want in­for­ma­tion. And if the per­son knows that your cam­era is on, you think they’re talk­ing?” he asked.

He said some res­i­dents may wor­ry that record­ed in­for­ma­tion could even­tu­al­ly fall in­to the hands of the crim­i­nals they are re­port­ing.

His com­ments came a day af­ter Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar told the House that body-worn cam­eras “must” be used by po­lice of­fi­cers op­er­at­ing in closed ar­eas.

Sturge de­scribed the bill as a “com­mon sense piece of leg­is­la­tion” that com­bines en­hanced se­cu­ri­ty pow­ers with ex­ten­sive safe­guards and ac­count­abil­i­ty mea­sures.

He al­so point­ed to pro­vi­sions re­quir­ing all weapons and am­mu­ni­tion as­signed to of­fi­cers in­volved in spe­cial op­er­a­tions to be reg­is­tered, in­clud­ing their bal­lis­tic sig­na­tures, as an ad­di­tion­al ac­count­abil­i­ty mech­a­nism.

Sturge said the Gov­ern­ment was con­fi­dent the leg­is­la­tion would help dis­rupt crim­i­nal gangs while pro­tect­ing law-abid­ing cit­i­zens.

“We are con­fi­dent,” he said.

“There will be a vic­to­ry. The vic­to­ry will be the vic­to­ry of good over evil.”