Richard Ra­moutar

Has the in­tel­li­gence pro­vid­ed sat­is­fied the bona fide of the state of emer­gency? Since the de­par­ture of Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice Dwayne Gibbs to Brazil on Au­gust 19, and oth­er than the Po­lice Ser­vice in­tel­li­gence or­gans, there must have an avalanche of ex­treme­ly grave, crit­i­cal col­lec­tion, analy­sis and eval­u­a­tion of sig­nif­i­cant crim­i­nal in­tel­li­gence by the oth­er na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty agen­cies (SSA, Coast Guard or Army In­tel­li­gence) with­in ap­prox­i­mate­ly 36 hours, that would have con­sti­tut­ed an im­mi­nent and ac­tu­al threat to the or­gan­ised life of the com­mu­ni­ty and the en­dan­ger­ment of pub­lic safe­ty to war­rant a Pres­i­den­tial procla­ma­tion of a state of emer­gency.

Ac­cord­ing to the re­lease from the Of­fice of the Pres­i­dent, "cred­i­ble crim­i­nal in­tel­li­gence from the na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty agen­cies" was vi­tal to the procla­ma­tion of the emer­gency. If that is the case, one does not know what part the in­tel­li­gence or­gans of the Po­lice Ser­vice played in that grave as­sess­ment. What is be­com­ing clear­er is that the act­ing Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice Stephen Williams was called to the home of the ho­n­ourable Prime Min­is­ter on that fate­ful Sun­day af­ter­noon to be ad­vised of an im­pend­ing state of emer­gency, as well as some mem­bers of the Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Coun­cil (NSC).

The Min­is­ter of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty John Sandy has claimed that he ad­vised the NSC that one of the rec­om­men­da­tions to deal with this grave threat to pub­lic safe­ty was to in­sti­tute a state of emer­gency, and that the in­tel­li­gence ar­rived at was "clas­si­fied." As the Po­lice Ser­vice is the pre­mier law-fight­ing agency in the coun­try, with the req­ui­site ma­chin­ery to as­sist in mak­ing that de­ter­mi­na­tion, it seems puz­zling that the de­riv­a­tives of such an as­sess­ment may not have em­anat­ed from that part of na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty be­tween Fri­day and Sat­ur­day, hence the de­par­ture of Gibbs to Brazil. Per­haps the Army In­tel­li­gence, the SSA and the ef­fer­ves­cent Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Ad­vis­er to the Prime Min­is­ter filled that void.

Both the Min­is­ter of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty and the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al in­di­cat­ed that, "a cri­sis and mas­sive dis­as­ter was avert­ed." How­ev­er, in or­der to al­lay any pub­lic con­cerns and scep­ti­cism, there must be im­me­di­ate in­tel­li­gence point­ing to a spe­cif­ic threat bear­ing in mind, (the na­ture, scope, sever­i­ty and per­haps du­ra­tion of that threat). If the threat is nei­ther im­me­di­ate nor spe­cif­ic, how then can there be a pub­lic emer­gency? Or was the pres­i­den­tial de­c­la­ra­tion not a re­sponse to any im­mi­nent threat, but rather a le­gal tech­ni­cal­i­ty and crime fight­ing strat­e­gy to en­sure im­ple­men­ta­tion of the An­ti-Gang Leg­is­la­tion and po­lit­i­cal con­sol­i­da­tion? In the ab­sence of suf­fi­cient ex­pla­na­tion, it re­mains ques­tion­able whether there is a "pub­lic emer­gency."

Ac­cord­ing to the Con­sti­tu­tion, Sec­tion 8(1) (2) the Pres­i­dent shall not is­sue a procla­ma­tion un­less he is sat­is­fied that (a) im­mi­nence of a war has arisen be­tween Trinidad and To­ba­go and a for­eign state, (b) a pub­lic emer­gency has arisen as a re­sult of an earth­quake, hur­ri­cane, floods, fire, in­fec­tious dis­ease or oth­er calami­ty, or (c) ac­tion has been tak­en or is im­me­di­ate­ly threat­ened by any per­son of such a na­ture, and so ex­ten­sive a scale so as like­ly to en­dan­ger the pub­lic safe­ty or to de­prive the com­mu­ni­ty or a sub­stan­tial com­mu­ni­ty of sup­plies of ser­vices es­sen­tial to life.

Nat­u­ral­ly, the first two do not ap­ply, but what is ap­par­ent­ly im­plied from the in­tel­li­gence as­sess­ment is the dan­ger to pub­lic safe­ty. The cri­sis sit­u­a­tion en­vis­ages ex­cep­tion­al sit­u­a­tions, and that "dan­ger must be of suf­fi­cient grav­i­ty to threat­en the or­gan­ised ex­is­tence of a na­tion that is to say, the po­lit­i­cal and so­cial sys­tem as a state." A mere lo­cal "il­le­gal drugs and guns" cri­sis ought not to be con­vert­ed in­to a state of emer­gency. No one can dis­pute the fact that se­ri­ous and or­gan­ised crime has un­leashed a tidal wave of fear and vi­o­lence in this coun­try for years, es­pe­cial­ly in the il­le­gal drugs and guns trade. As the pub­lic emer­gency is be­ing claimed in re­la­tion to that threat, the PP gov­ern­ment must es­tab­lish that it is fac­ing the risk of im­me­di­ate ex­e­cu­tion of that threat. Dur­ing the month of April, 2011, there were al­so sev­er­al mur­ders, as well as the ar­rival of con­tain­ers with drugs at Point Lisas, but no emer­gency was called.

Where is the in­tel­li­gence that has so far elud­ed the in­tel­li­gence com­mu­ni­ty that can pin­point to drugs and guns that may be avail­able at Ch­aguara­mas, Val­sayn, Glen­coe, Gulf View, Palmiste, and on those small craft ves­sels? Where is the Cus­toms in­tel­li­gence on the con­tain­ers to the white-col­lar crim­i­nal gangs, or to the dai­ly ar­rival by sea of guns and drugs at Moru­ga, Ica­cos, Ce­dros, Erin, Morne Di­a­blo? Should not every coast guard of­fice, po­lice sta­tion, cus­toms of­fice, im­mi­gra­tion of­fice, be a source of in­tel­li­gence? What about the Fi­nan­cial In­tel­li­gence Unit. Has the Gov­ern­ment, in the process, cre­at­ed a mi­ni-ver­sion of 9/11 on a sus­pect­ed group of na­tion­als, with the prospect of in­def­i­nite de­ten­tion, and a le­gal quag­mire?

Is it law­ful for a sus­pect­ed na­tion­al to be de­tained in­def­i­nite­ly on the ba­sis of se­cret ev­i­dence, or guilt by as­so­ci­a­tion or liv­ing in a hot spot com­mu­ni­ty with­out be­ing charged for a crim­i­nal of­fence? The Gov­ern­ment's cre­ation of a sus­pect group of pro­filed na­tion­als can be both in­ef­fec­tive and dis­crim­i­na­to­ry as it has em­ployed sev­er­al tac­tics to shield its strate­gies from pub­lic scruti­ny. The ques­tion re­mains whether the gov­ern­ment has a right to use what is calls "cred­i­ble in­tel­li­gence" to in­voke a state of emer­gency to achieve law en­force­ment goals in or­der to sat­is­fy its po­lit­i­cal agen­da.

This col­umn ar­gues that such an adopt­ed course of ac­tion is based on in­her­ent­ly nar­row sus­pect cat­e­gories, such as cer­tain hot-spot ar­eas, those of a rather low­er so­cio-eco­nom­ic back­ground; are in­ap­pro­pri­ate with­out show­ing a link be­tween the sus­pects' traits and their in­volve­ment in crim­i­nal ac­tiv­i­ty. What we are will­ing to sac­ri­fice for po­ten­tial in­creas­es in se­cu­ri­ty re­main at large as one of Amer­i­ca's Found­ing Fa­thers warned in 1759 "that they can give up es­sen­tial lib­er­ty to ob­tain a lit­tle tem­po­rary safe­ty nei­ther de­serve lib­er­ty nor safe­ty."