How would the gains made in the re­duc­tion of mur­ders dur­ing the State of Emer­gency (SoE) be sus­tained? That was al­ways the ques­tion af­ter the SoE. The Gov­ern­ment’s an­swer was the Zones of Op­er­a­tions Bill, which sought to con­tain the gang­sters and crim­i­nals where they live or work, by giv­ing emer­gency pow­ers to ar­rest and de­tain to joint po­lice and army pa­trols.

So, if we ad­mit 1) that mur­ders got out of hand; 2) that the num­ber of mur­ders was cut by 40% un­der con­di­tions of the SoE and ag­gres­sive polic­ing; 3) that the num­ber mur­ders need to come down at a more dra­mat­ic rate; 4) that it is de­sir­able to de­tain and ques­tion iden­ti­fied gang lead­ers; 5) and that we need to put known gang lead­ers and gang­sters un­der sur­veil­lance; the next ques­tion should be what did we fail to do or what did we not do well un­der SoE con­di­tions that we will do bet­ter now, un­der con­di­tions of more tar­get­ed com­mu­ni­ty scruti­ny or sur­veil­lance? Per­haps this ques­tion was not sat­is­fac­to­ri­ly an­swered.

With that bill de­feat­ed in the Sen­ate on Tues­day, I it is rea­son­able for Gov­ern­ment to ask the Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er to an­swer that ques­tion truth­ful­ly; and, on the ba­sis of his an­swers, Gov­ern­ment must then tell the Par­lia­ment and our cit­i­zens why, af­ter a SoE for six months, with gen­uine re­duc­tions in mur­ders, they still need these pow­ers in tar­get­ed com­mu­ni­ties. It must al­so be un­der­stood that SoE pow­ers for tar­get­ed com­mu­ni­ties can­not be in­def­i­nite. Or else, what we will be ad­mit­ting is that our coun­try, or at least some parts of it, are un­govern­able un­der nor­mal rules and laws. And if that is the case, we would be forced to ad­mit that T&T is in an un­ten­able sit­u­a­tion.

The vi­tal el­e­ments of the bill are the sat­u­rat­ed gang/crime con­tain­ment ini­tia­tives it would al­low and the so­cial sup­port mea­sures meant to ac­com­pa­ny the crime-bust­ing ini­tia­tives. Long-term suc­cess will large­ly de­pend on whether the po­lice raid el­e­ments are over­ly dom­i­nant or the so­cial in­ter­ven­tions are tru­ly mean­ing­ful. That is to say, whether it is a so­cial project sup­port­ed by se­cu­ri­ty; or over­whelm­ing, force-dri­ven po­lice in­ter­ven­tion with min­i­mal so­cial re­form sup­port.

In this re­gard, a bal­ance be­tween ex­tra­or­di­nary po­lice pow­ers - 72-hour lock­down, stop, search, en­ter with­out a war­rant - with all its po­ten­tial for abuse de­spite gen­uine guard rails in­clud­ed in the bill, and com­mu­ni­ty safe­ty, pro­tec­tion and na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty, needs to be struck.

Ra­tio­nal de­bate should have fall­en be­tween two wide bound­aries - whether or not you think that ex­tra­or­di­nary pow­er to law en­force­ment is nec­es­sary and will work to break the gang stran­gle hold, or whether you think such a sit­u­a­tion will pose a threat to in­di­vid­ual and civ­il lib­er­ties and to con­sti­tu­tion­al rights.

It may well be that In­de­pen­dent Sen­a­tors came down on the side of civ­il lib­er­ties.

The ex­pe­ri­ence in Ja­maica, on which this bill draws, is mixed. But mur­ders, gang vi­o­lence and crime have been dra­mat­i­cal­ly re­duced in Ja­maica with­in about three years.

The root­ed­ness of gangs in iden­ti­fi­able com­mu­ni­ties, their pow­er and in­flu­ence, as well as their abil­i­ty to in­still fear, by swift, vi­cious ac­tion against per­ceived en­e­mies or chal­lenges, make them for­mi­da­ble threats to com­mu­ni­ty well-be­ing and na­tion­al peace, or­der and sta­bil­i­ty. In coun­tries across the re­gion, gang­ster­ism has be­come a threat to the state it­self. Caribbean gov­ern­ments find it dif­fi­cult to cope. But, do we want to nor­malise emer­gency pow­ers? Do we want “Pro­tect and Serve” to be­come “Search and De­stroy?” These are hard ques­tions cen­tral to our ex­is­tence and ethos.

As fate would have it, just as the Sen­ate de­bate was tak­ing place, a video sur­faced of a po­lice shoot­ing of Joshua Sama­roo, who put his arms out of his car’s win­dow in sur­ren­der. His paral­ysed girl­friend Ka­ia Sealey was al­so shot. The po­lice nar­ra­tive of the con­text of this po­lice killing, as car­ried in the me­dia, does not align with what you see in the video. Hov­er­ing over this sit­u­a­tion in our own T&T, is the dis­so­nance be­tween of­fi­cial nar­ra­tive in Min­neapo­lis, Min­neso­ta and what you see with your eyes in the videos pro­vid­ed by vi­su­al me­dia in the US.

More­over, the stri­den­cy of our Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice, the force­ful­ness of some state­ments by our Prime Min­is­ter on boat killings by the US mil­i­tary in the Caribbean Sea, and on vot­ing dis­po­si­tion in the Sen­ate, may well have tipped the scale against in­creased ex­ec­u­tive and mil­i­tary pow­er.

While cit­i­zens vot­ed in 2025 to tip the scale against crim­i­nals, per­haps most are com­fort­able on­ly with lim­it­ed, ac­count­able pow­er for the po­lice, mil­i­tary and the ex­ec­u­tive, none of which have a spot­less record in T&T.