RHON­DA RAM­BAL­LY

Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar has re­ceived prais­es from for­mer me­dia mogul Ken Gor­don for de­clar­ing a state of emer­gency.He said Per­sad-Bisses­sar should be com­mend­ed for demon­strat­ing courage and de­ci­sive­ness, of which her pre­de­ces­sors ap­peared in­ca­pable.He said, how­ev­er, more than 75 per cent of those who were killed in the last eight years, could have been saved had his call for a state of emer­gency been im­ple­ment­ed.He said: "We have a war on our hands that will not end with a state of emer­gency un­less we trans­form our val­ues even while we keep the gun­men on the run."Gor­don was the guest speak­er at a meet­ing host­ed by the Ro­tary Club of Port-of-Spain at Good­will In­dus­tries, Wood­brook, yes­ter­day.At­tor­ney Gen­er­al Anand Ram­lo­gan is ex­pect­ed to speak at the club's next week­ly meet­ing.Gor­don was the head of the Crime Re­duc­tion and Pre­ven­tion Com­mit­tee and in 2003 pre­sent­ed 31 rec­om­men­da­tions to the pre­vi­ous ad­min­is­tra­tion to ad­dress the up­surge in crim­i­nal­i­ty.He said now that the state of emer­gency was in ef­fect, the coun­try should make it work more ef­fec­tive­ly than it was al­ready work­ing, giv­en the suc­cess in the num­ber of ar­rests and seizure of il­le­gal firearms.Gor­don said: "I am forced to re­mind that eight years ago when our crime com­mit­tee first called for the state of emer­gency, the po­lice told us then that they knew where the guns could be found.

"How many lives might have been saved had we done that and had we ex­er­cised good judge­ment at that time is a mat­ter of which we can on­ly spec­u­late."My guess is that we may well have saved any­thing like 75 per cent of the more than 2,000 lives that were lost."He said the com­mit­tee rec­om­mend­ed mea­sures to main­tain tight con­trol over easy ac­cess to il­le­gal firearms which had then ex­ist­ed.Among some of the com­mit­tee's rec­om­men­da­tions were:

Elec­tron­ic ev­i­dence in crim­i­nal pro­ceed­ings;

re-in­tro­duc­tion of the Ad­min­is­tra­tion of Jus­tice Bill (2001);

DNA Act;

Breathal­yser Bill;

crime stop­pers in all schools;

em­pha­sis on dis­ci­pli­nary mea­sur­ers in school;

na­tion­al cam­paign against crime; and

six rec­om­men­da­tions to ad­dress so­cial prob­lems.

Gor­don said: "We worked for three days... day in­to night."Our re­port re­spond­ed to a prime min­is­ter's call for ur­gency and the re­port was hand­ed in on the fourth day."Thir­ty-one rec­om­men­da­tions were made, two were re­ject­ed and at last count two years ago ten of the ac­cept­ed 29 had been im­ple­ment­ed af­ter eight years."Gor­don said ad­e­quate arrange­ments must now be made to ad­dress the in­crease in the pris­ons.He said hard­ened crim­i­nals should not be locked up with first-time of­fend­ers and that gun-re­lat­ed cas­es should be dealt with­in 72 hours even if it meant the in­tro­duc­tion of a night court.