Stakeholders warn against ‘normalising’ emergency rule

Jesse Ramdeo

Se­nior Re­porter

[email protected]

Po­lit­i­cal sci­en­tist Dr Bish­nu Ra­goonath says he was not sur­prised by the move by Gov­ern­ment to in­sti­tute an­oth­er State of Emer­gency, par­tic­u­lar­ly in the wake of the re­cent mass shoot­ing in Laven­tille that left three peo­ple dead. It is the sec­ond SoE to be called since the Gov­ern­ment came in­to of­fice in May 2025. It was an­nounced yes­ter­day morn­ing by Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar.

Speak­ing with Guardian Me­dia , Ra­goonath said the de­c­la­ra­tion came in a con­text where ques­tions were al­ready be­ing raised in Par­lia­ment about the Gov­ern­ment’s re­sponse to ris­ing crime.

“It did not sur­prise me that we would have had an­oth­er state of emer­gency in the con­text of the mass shoot­ing when we had the three peo­ple killed in Laven­tille,” he said. He ref­er­enced con­cerns raised by MP Kei­th Scot­land in the af­ter­math of the in­ci­dent and sug­gest­ed that, in the ab­sence of new leg­isla­tive tools, the Gov­ern­ment opt­ed for ex­tra­or­di­nary con­sti­tu­tion­al mea­sures.

“So it was not sur­pris­ing to me that the State of Emer­gency was de­clared in that con­text,” Ra­goonath added.

How­ev­er, he ques­tioned whether cit­i­zens may be be­com­ing de­sen­si­tised to re­peat­ed emer­gency de­c­la­ra­tions.

“I think the chal­leng­ing part for us as we go for­ward is whether Trinida­di­ans are be­com­ing numb to this no­tion of a state of emer­gency and its im­pact on so­ci­ety,” he said.

Ra­goonath ar­gued that while civ­il lib­er­ties con­cerns are of­ten raised, many cit­i­zens who are not di­rect­ly af­fect­ed by re­stric­tions may see the mea­sure as nec­es­sary.

“There are many peo­ple who live un­der a de­gree of fear of what is tran­spir­ing in the wider so­ci­ety and prob­a­bly be­lieve that a state of emer­gency is one of the best op­tions avail­able right now to quell ris­ing crime,” he said. “For the or­di­nary per­son on the street, they don’t nec­es­sar­i­ly see their civ­il lib­er­ties re­strict­ed. From that per­spec­tive, the state of emer­gency is just there, and hope­ful­ly it will have some im­pact on re­duc­ing crime.”

Re­gion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Ex­pert Garvin Heer­ah cau­tioned against mak­ing states of emer­gency the de­fault re­sponse to crime spikes.

Heer­ah said the de­c­la­ra­tion rep­re­sents “an ad­mis­sion that con­ven­tion­al crime-fight­ing mech­a­nisms have been over­whelmed.”

He called for a na­tion­al au­dit of the pre­vi­ous SoE, ask­ing: What op­er­a­tional tac­tics worked? What in­tel­li­gence mech­a­nisms proved ef­fec­tive? Which gang struc­tures were dis­man­tled? How many pros­e­cu­tions were sus­tained af­ter de­ten­tions? And what sys­tems were in­sti­tu­tion­alised once the SoE end­ed?

“A State of Emer­gency can tem­porar­i­ly sup­press vi­o­lence through en­hanced pow­ers of de­ten­tion, cur­fews and co­or­di­nat­ed se­cu­ri­ty op­er­a­tions,” Heer­ah not­ed. “How­ev­er, sup­pres­sion with­out sus­tain­abil­i­ty on­ly cre­ates a pause in crim­i­nal ac­tiv­i­ty, not its elim­i­na­tion.”

He warned that re­turn­ing to emer­gency pow­ers sug­gests that long-term crime man­age­ment sys­tems were ei­ther not em­bed­ded or not main­tained with dis­ci­pline and over­sight.

“We can­not nor­malise a cy­cle where every spike in vi­o­lence trig­gers ex­tra­or­di­nary con­sti­tu­tion­al mea­sures. That ap­proach sig­nals fragili­ty in our law en­force­ment ar­chi­tec­ture and em­bold­ens crim­i­nal en­ter­pris­es who sim­ply adapt, pause, and then re­sume op­er­a­tions once re­stric­tions ease,” he said.

Heer­ah stressed that the lat­est SoE must be strate­gic and ac­com­pa­nied by in­ter­nal re­forms, in­clud­ing in­tegri­ty au­dits, counter-in­tel­li­gence op­er­a­tions, poly­graph and lifestyle au­dits for high-risk po­si­tions, swift dis­ci­pli­nary and crim­i­nal ac­tion against com­pro­mised of­fi­cers, and pro­tec­tion frame­works for whis­tle-blow­ers with­in the ser­vices.

“If we fail to ad­dress the in­sid­er threat, every tac­ti­cal gain on the streets will be un­der­mined from with­in,” he added.

Po­lit­i­cal Leader of the Move­ment for So­cial Jus­tice, David Ab­du­lah, al­so ex­pressed con­cern over the de­c­la­ra­tion, ques­tion­ing whether au­thor­i­ties made any sig­nif­i­cant progress dur­ing the pre­vi­ous two states of emer­gency.

Ab­du­lah ar­gued that se­cu­ri­ty forces should have used the ear­li­er pe­ri­ods un­der emer­gency rule to gath­er the in­tel­li­gence and ev­i­dence nec­es­sary to ar­rest and charge in­di­vid­u­als in­volved in se­ri­ous crimes.

“On­ly a hand­ful com­pared to the num­ber in­car­cer­at­ed un­der the last SoE were in fact charged,” he said, adding that the pub­lic re­mains un­aware of the spe­cif­ic charges or whether de­tainees were lat­er grant­ed bail.

Ab­du­lah con­tend­ed that this demon­strates a fail­ure, par­tic­u­lar­ly by the po­lice, to ef­fec­tive­ly utilise the ex­tra­or­di­nary pow­ers grant­ed dur­ing the pre­vi­ous emer­gen­cies.

Ac­cord­ing to Ab­du­lah, these mea­sures have height­ened pub­lic anx­i­ety, as they ap­pear to im­pose se­ri­ous re­stric­tions on cit­i­zens’ rights.

Po­lit­i­cal Leader of the All Peo­ple’s Par­ty, Kezel Jack­son, la­belled the lat­est move by Gov­ern­ment as a state of ‘em­bar­rass­ment’. In a Face­book post, Jack­son claimed the Gov­ern­ment lacked con­crete crime-fight­ing plans.

“This is a sum of er­rors, wrong Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice, this is what we al­so call ‘sor­ry, on­ly ex­cus­es.’ Kam­la said the SoE was a failed plas­ter by the Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment, now she is call­ing SoE af­ter SoE, ap­par­ent­ly it means for her ‘sor­ry on­ly ex­cus­es.”

She said crime was a pub­lic health con­cern and ar­tic­u­lat­ed what she de­scribed as her crime plan, which in­clud­ed a strict leg­isla­tive frame­work that would al­low for the de­ten­tion of gang mem­bers, a mul­ti-na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty sup­port, as well as a “shared re­spon­si­bil­i­ty as a pop­u­la­tion” to as­sist with re­cidi­vism pro­grammes.