T&T spent 301 days under SoE since December 2024

Joshua Seemu­n­gal

Se­nior In­ves­tiga­tive Jour­nal­ist

joshua.seemu­n­[email protected]

Since De­cem­ber 2024, T&T has spent 301 days un­der a State of Emer­gency (SoE).

The last State of Emer­gency end­ed yes­ter­day.

In 2025, T&T spent ap­prox­i­mate­ly 72 per cent, 270 days or 6,240 hours, in an SOE, con­tin­u­ing in­to 2026.

In con­trast, 28 per cent of 2025, equiv­a­lent to just 105 days or 2,520 hours, was spent out­side of one.

The Gov­ern­ment’s fol­low-up to im­ple­ment Zones of Spe­cial Op­er­a­tions via a Bill failed in the Sen­ate last week.

Be­tween Jan­u­ary and March, sta­tis­tics pro­vid­ed by the Trinidad and To­ba­go Po­lice Ser­vice showed that in the first three full months of the first SoE, there were 3,036 re­port­ed se­ri­ous crimes, av­er­ag­ing 1,012 se­ri­ous crimes per month.

The three months pre­dat­ing the im­ple­men­ta­tion of the SoE saw few­er re­port­ed crimes, 2,606 se­ri­ous crimes, av­er­ag­ing 869 se­ri­ous crimes per month.

How­ev­er, the most heav­i­ly scru­ti­nised crimes—rob­beries, bur­glar­ies and break-ins and mur­ders—all de­creased.

Be­tween Oc­to­ber and De­cem­ber 2024, there were 151 mur­ders ac­cord­ing to the TTPS.

That dropped to 98 mur­ders be­tween Jan­u­ary and April 2025—a 35 per cent de­crease.

There was a 15 per cent de­crease in rob­beries and a one per cent de­crease in break-ins.

Crim­i­nol­o­gist Dr Randy Seep­er­sad said his own da­ta al­so showed that there were few­er crimes dur­ing the SoEs.

“The bot­tom line is that lives would have been saved as a re­sult. Now, notwith­stand­ing the com­ing to the end of the SoE, it was clear to me that the Gov­ern­ment re­alised that a SoE isn’t a long-term sus­tain­able type of ap­proach and that some­thing else, mean­ing some­thing more, by way of in­ter­ven­tion, was need­ed.

“Hence the rea­son that they were at least at­tempt­ing to bring the zone of spe­cial op­er­a­tions ap­proach to Trinidad and To­ba­go. Un­for­tu­nate­ly, as you know, it didn’t get through Par­lia­ment, and un­for­tu­nate­ly, I un­der­stand, the Prime Min­is­ter says that she doesn’t plan to bring it back. I hope that she re­con­sid­ers be­cause that par­tic­u­lar ap­proach is an ap­proach which is very suc­cess­ful in lo­ca­tions such as Ja­maica,” he said.

Ac­cord­ing to Seep­er­sad, the Gov­ern­ment cor­rect­ly recog­nised a need to utilise sup­pres­sion.

“The prob­lem with the sup­pres­sive ap­proach is that once you lift your fin­ger off the prob­lem, the prob­lem re-emerges in full force. And that is pre­cise­ly what we are go­ing to ex­pect if the SoE is lift­ed.

“Notwith­stand­ing, I do al­so want to men­tion that some of the com­ments that were raised in Par­lia­ment are valid crit­i­cisms that we re­al­ly need to look at. One, for sure, is the is­sue of hu­man rights. We may not have to go to the ex­tent of body-worn cam­eras, as some sen­a­tors sug­gest­ed, but we could do oth­er things. We could, for in­stance, en­sure that there’s a very high pro­por­tion of com­mu­ni­ty po­lice of­fi­cers. We can en­sure some lev­el of pre-train­ing of­fi­cers,” the co­or­di­na­tor of UWI St Au­gus­tine’s Crim­i­nol­o­gy De­part­ment said.

Mean­while, crim­i­nol­o­gist Dr Dau­rius Figueira be­lieved that the SoEs failed to com­pre­hen­sive­ly stop the every­day work­ings of the gangs, de­spite al­leged lead­ers be­ing de­tained.

He be­lieved the de­creas­es in crime num­bers dur­ing the SoEs had more to do with pre-ex­ist­ing gang dy­nam­ics.

“As the SoE winds down, hence the rush for ZO­ZOs—which is a cru­el myth as it did not ac­com­plish what the Ja­maican and T&T politi­cians say it did in Ja­maica— the re­al­i­ty is Pax Mex­i­cana since 2023 con­trols the East-West Cor­ri­dor and To­ba­go, which means they con­trol the beat­ing heart of Gang­land—note how dead qui­et it is. The Colom­bian Dons con­trol from Cunu­pia to Bar­rack­pore—note how it is the new land of vi­o­lence.

“The SoEs have made no dif­fer­ence, for the mur­der toll dropped pre­cip­i­tous­ly as there were sim­ply no more tar­gets to kill; they are all dead. All that is left now are sup­posed lead­ers with­out fol­low­ers, turf and prod­uct. Those af­fil­i­at­ed with the Colom­bian Dons let out from prison shall have to flee to the turf of the Colom­bian Dons, in­ten­si­fy­ing the may­hem in Kam­la’s po­lit­i­cal heart­land. And if they are walk­ing dead, they shall die down there,” he said.

Crim­i­nal at­tor­ney Criston J Williams al­so be­lieved the SoEs failed to achieve any gen­uine suc­cess.

“The UNC de­clared a state of emer­gency based on undis­closed in­tel­li­gence and al­leged threats to na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty. Re­mem­ber, there was the re­port of a rock­et launch­er, and there were the threats to min­is­ters, judges… The pub­lic was asked to ac­cept ex­tra­or­di­nary ex­ec­u­tive pow­er in the ab­sence of any in­dict­ments or out­comes con­nect­ed to the al­leged plots that were the ba­sis of the SoE in the first place.

“What both gov­ern­ments seemed to do is try to nor­malise in the pop­u­la­tion’s mind a state of emer­gency, ex­cep­tion­al po­lice pow­er, and they want­ed the pop­u­la­tion to ac­cept this. But with the ZOSO—that men­tal­i­ty they want­ed us to ac­cept, that ap­proach—col­lapsed in the Sen­ate, and right­ly so. So that is an in­dict­ment of the strat­e­gy right now,” he said.