The State of Emer­gency (SOE) has con­tributed to safer com­mu­ni­ties, par­tic­u­lar­ly in ar­eas af­fect­ed by se­ri­ous crime, ac­cord­ing to Min­is­ter in the Min­istry of Hous­ing Philip Alexan­der, who point­ed to a sharp de­cline in re­port­ed crime since the emer­gency mea­sures were in­tro­duced.

Alexan­der was speak­ing dur­ing a vis­it to the Pier View hous­ing de­vel­op­ment in La Brea yes­ter­day, where he was ac­com­pa­nied by La Brea MP Clyde El­der.

His com­ments come as the Gov­ern­ment pre­pares to de­cide whether the cur­rent SoE should come to an end on Sep­tem­ber 17.

Asked whether the emer­gency mea­sures had made com­mu­ni­ties safer, Alexan­der said the fig­ures were ev­i­dence of their im­pact.

“To quote [Clyde] El­der, the num­bers speak for them­selves,” he said, point­ing to what he de­scribed as a 61 per cent re­duc­tion in crime in the Port-of-Spain Di­vi­sion.

He al­so cit­ed a na­tion­al 42 per cent re­duc­tion in vi­o­lent crime and mur­ders dur­ing the pe­ri­od.

The lat­est mur­der fig­ures show 245 mur­ders record­ed so far in 2026, com­pared with 257 for the same pe­ri­od in 2025. This rep­re­sents a re­duc­tion of 12 mur­ders, or ap­prox­i­mate­ly 4.7 per cent year-on-year.

He sin­gled out Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Roger Alexan­der and Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Al­lis­ter Gue­var­ro for praise, say­ing the re­duc­tion in crime re­flect­ed their ef­forts.

Ac­cord­ing to Alexan­der, the SoE does not re­move cit­i­zens’ rights and free­doms but in­stead gives law en­force­ment ad­di­tion­al pow­ers to tar­get crim­i­nal el­e­ments.

“For all of us, the SoE just ex­ists be­hind us, around us, like a blan­ket of safe­ty and se­cu­ri­ty; we’ve ben­e­fit­ed from it,” he said.

How­ev­er, Alexan­der ac­knowl­edged that the Gov­ern­ment would have to con­tin­ue work­ing on longer-term mea­sures to main­tain pub­lic safe­ty.

He said dis­cus­sions were al­ready tak­ing place about in­creas­ing the num­ber of po­lice posts, not­ing that res­i­dents in four com­mu­ni­ties with­in his con­stituen­cy had ap­proached him at town hall meet­ings seek­ing greater po­lice pres­ence.

El­der said res­i­dents could ex­pect an in­creased po­lice pres­ence when ad­di­tion­al re­sources be­come avail­able.

He said the near­est po­lice fa­cil­i­ty was the La Brea po­lice post, which he de­scribed as be­ing a short dis­tance from the de­vel­op­ment.

He said he had been in reg­u­lar com­mu­ni­ca­tion with Se­nior Su­per­in­ten­dent Kelvin Thomp­son and had an “ex­cel­lent re­la­tion­ship” with po­lice of­fi­cers across his con­stituen­cy.

How­ev­er, El­der said po­lice were fac­ing re­source con­straints, in­clud­ing a short­age of ve­hi­cles.

He said he had raised those con­cerns with Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Roger Alexan­der and ex­pressed con­fi­dence that po­lice pres­ence would in­crease once ad­di­tion­al re­sources be­came avail­able.