Rad­hi­ca Sookraj

One year af­ter Gov­ern­ment de­clared a state of emer­gency to pre­vent what it de­scribed as an "im­pend­ing blood­bath," the mur­der toll con­tin­ues to climb and re­views are still mixed on whether it had made an im­pact. While there have been im­prove­ments in polic­ing and in­tel­li­gence gath­er­ing, Dr Hamid Ghany, dean of the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies (UWI) and co-or­di­na­tor of the Con­sti­tu­tion­al Af­fairs and Par­lia­men­tary Stud­ies Unit (CAP­SU), be­lieves the po­lice is yet to make a re­al dent in crime.

Speak­ing from abroad dur­ing a tele­phone in­ter­view he said the emer­gency, which last­ed from Au­gust 22 to De­cem­ber 5, was cru­cial to­wards in­tel­li­gence-gath­er­ing. He added: "We can now see the im­pact the emer­gency?had in re­duc­ing crime. What it did was cre­ate a con­trast be­cause when it end­ed things went back the way it was in terms of the mur­der rate. "The emer­gency al­lowed the po­lice to gath­er in­tel­li­gence and now the po­lice are cer­tain­ly able to ex­e­cute their du­ties with the ben­e­fit of the emer­gency be­hind them.

"They were able to get the in­sight need­ed but there is still a lot to be done, based on the in­for­ma­tion that was gath­ered." How­ev­er, chair of the Coali­tion Against Do­mes­tic Vi­o­lence, Di­ana Ma­habir-Wy­att, said she want­ed im­prove­ments not just in in­tel­li­gence-gath­er­ing but in the col­lec­tion of ev­i­dence while con­ced­ing there were im­prove­ments in ef­fec­tive polic­ing since it end­ed. She added: "There is no point in ar­rest­ing some­body if you have in­tel­li­gence un­less the ev­i­dence is there.

"When we saw the videos of the guys on Nel­son Street rob­bing cars the court did not take that in­to ev­i­dence. "Since the emer­gency end­ed, the de­f­i­n­i­tion of ev­i­dence has been clar­i­fied and that is an im­prove­ment." She al­so said the im­prove­ments in polic­ing oc­curred be­cause of Com­mis­sion­er Dwayne Gibbs' 21st cen­tu­ry polic­ing ini­tia­tive. She said: "I am look­ing at the news­pa­per and the mur­der toll is 263. It is high­er than it was when the state of emer­gency was de­clared.

"From the point of view of mur­ders, we have had no change or im­prove­ments but from the point of view of non-vi­o­lent crimes we have seen a re­duc­tion." She said that was be­cause of im­prove­ments in com­mu­ni­ty polic­ing af­ter the emer­gency. She said: "The 21st cen­tu­ry polic­ing was putting a lot of po­lice in the streets and it did a lot of good. The com­mu­ni­ty polic­ing went well, yet every­time we get some­thing that is ef­fec­tive, it van­ish­es."

She laud­ed plans by Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Jack Warn­er to re­cruit 10,000 Spe­cial Re­serve po­lice of­fi­cers. "If they do a prop­er se­lec­tion pro­ce­dure and check the ref­er­ences and they train them in cus­tomer re­la­tions, train them to deal with do­mes­tic crimes and abuse of chil­dren, then we will see more im­prove­ments," Ma­habir-Wy­att added. She said the Cit­i­zen Sup­port Bu­reau could al­so train the po­lice be­fore they were put on the streets.

How­ev­er, pres­i­dent of the In­ter-Re­li­gious Or­gan­i­sa­tion, Pun­dit Har­riper­sad Ma­haraj, said lit­tle was achieved from the emer­gency. He said the on­ly ben­e­fits were when the Gov­ern­ment was able to get a han­dle on crime. De­spite that, Ma­haraj said, it was time for an­oth­er emer­gency to be im­ple­ment­ed.

Mean­while, sec­re­tary gen­er­al of the Sanathan Dhar­ma Ma­ha Sab­ha, Sat Ma­haraj, agreed that crim­i­nals were leav­ing "hot spots" and fil­ter­ing down to rur­al com­mu­ni­ties, like Bar­rack­pore and Debe, slaugh­ter­ing in­no­cent grand­moth­ers, like Leela De­onar­i­nesingh, 64, and 56-year-old po­lio vic­tim Don­awat­tie Jadoo­nanan, who were both mur­dered in their homes. How­ev­er, Ma­haraj said no­body had eval­u­at­ed the over­all ef­fects of the emer­gency.

He ad­ed: "There­fore, none of us are in a po­si­tion to ac­cu­rate­ly as­sess what would have been T&T's po­si­tion re­gard­ing crime if there was not an emer­gen­cuy. " The ex­perts should do an eval­u­a­tion rather than con­demn­ing the it," Ma­haraj added. He al­so agreed that thethe emer­gency fa­cil­i­tat­ed bet­ter polic­ing and in­tel­li­gence-gath­er­ing. How­ev­er, Move­ment for So­cial Jus­tice Leader, David Ab­du­lah said the emer­gency did not gen­er­ate any vis­i­ble im­prove­ments.

"The num­ber of peo­ple who have been mur­dered has con­tin­ued to be at a very high lev­el and it does not ap­pear the po­lice have been able to ob­tain any in­for­ma­tion that would bring down the num­ber of mur­ders," Ab­du­lah added. He not­ed there had been no high-pro­file ar­rests since the emer­gency. "We had well-pub­li­cised seizures but there is no high-pro­file ar­rests. No­body has been charged with white-col­lar crimes like mon­ey laun­der­ing.

"The rate of se­ri­ous crimes, in par­tic­u­lar mur­ders, has not im­proved sig­nif­i­cant­ly and there is no ev­i­dence present to sug­gest the emer­gency al­lowed po­lice to make a se­ri­ous dent in crime," Ab­du­lah said.