Trinidad’s brand-new government has placed the country under emergency measures to address a worrying rise in violent crime and to stymie alleged plans by gangsters and dangerous prisoners to assassinate top state officials. The country has already recorded nearly 250 murders so far this year.
The weekend announcement of state of emergency (SOE) measures is the second since last December and is in place for the very reason the previous government had agreed on: to block an elaborate plan by gangsters to seriously disrupt life in the federation with Tobago.
Police Chief Allister Guevarro said he moved swiftly to inform the administration of Prime Minister Kamla Persad Bissessar about the deteriorating situation after reviewing intelligence reports of major plans to disrupt peace in the oil and gas-rich republic, blaming the situation on a “highly dangerous criminal network” operating inside state prisons.
The government also moved with haste to have ceremonial President Christine Kangaloo sign documents initiating the emergency measures, giving police and the military additional powers of arrest and detention of criminal and other suspects. Some inmates regarded as dangerous and as gang leaders have already been moved to secret locations, separating them from others.
Guevarro said the plans of heavily armed gangs had included targeted assassination attacks on police, members of the judiciary, and other officials linked to law enforcement and state prosecutions, as well as prison officers. The commissioner noted that funding is derived from a range of violent organized criminal activities, including high-value robberies, extortions, kidnappings, and infiltration of state funded programs involving public works contracts.
The measures come without any restrictions of movement.
“The scale, coordination, and internal facilitation of these activities indicate an operational capability that exceeds the containment capacity of conventional law enforcement measures,” Guevarro said. “As such, a comprehensive and immediate strategic response was required to safeguard national stability and protect public officials and institutions.”
In justifying the move by the government to citizens, Attorney General John Jeremie said authorities were “left with no choice but to take the most dramatic action available under the constitution. We have done that, and we make no apologies for it. Our intelligence reports suggest, and they strongly suggest with a degree of high confidence, that the recent murder of a state prosecutor was directly linked to a specific gang.”
The last SOE ended in April. The commissioner contended that the last SOE was directed more at gang violence, while the latest “is being held to deal with a particular threat. It involves people who are forming themselves into an organized syndicate. I want to make that absolutely clear. This has nothing to do with gang violence.”
Security forces have already raided state prisons and removed a number of inmates suspected of being involved in the plot to disrupt life in the federation with Tobago, including the execution of top government and state officials, Guevarro said.
Citizens in the country have lived through several of these special security exercises in recent decades, including the July 1990 attempted coup that had resulted in the deaths of a few dozen people, gunshot injuries to then-Prime Minister Ray Robinson; arson attacks against businesses in the city; and the storming of parliament, the state television station, and other entities by an Islamic gang, upset about rising inflation and other ills in society.
Meanwhile, former Prime Minister Keith Rowley, whose government was roundly criticized for imposing an SOE at the end of last year, said current PM Persad Bissessar now has “eggs on her face” because she previously dismissed the then-measures as a political gimmick before the April 28 general elections that her party won.
“This SOE is a shameless political gimmick, a band-aid in an election year to address the root causes of crime,” Persad Bissessar said back then. “This (PNM) government is out of ideas and out of time and is hiding from the violent crime crisis he and his government contributed to over the last ten years. No plans were given for post-SoE.”