Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley yes­ter­day dis­missed Op­po­si­tion leader Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar’s call for a state of emer­gency to deal with the ris­ing crime sit­u­a­tion, say­ing his Gov­ern­ment does not be­lieve it is a fea­si­ble ap­proach to the is­sue.

Speak­ing dur­ing a post-Cab­i­net me­dia brief­ing at the Diplo­mat­ic Cen­tre, St Ann’s, Row­ley said Gov­ern­ment didn’t be­lieve an SoE is T&T’s best op­tion due to the num­ber of down sides, and the Gov­ern­ment didn’t want to do any­thing to dis­turb eco­nom­ic re­cov­ery it’s work­ing to­wards.

He said an SoE didn’t work in Ja­maica ei­ther.

Row­ley claimed the 2011 SoE im­ple­ment­ed by the then Peo­ple’s Part­ner­ship gov­ern­ment re­sult­ed in law­suits against the state, cost­ing tax­pay­ers mil­lions, yet when pub­lic PP of­fi­cials—Per­sad-Bisses­sar and the for­mer AG—were re­quired to put in an af­fi­davit to the court on why the SoE was called, they re­fused “... know­ing if they didn’t co-op­er­ate, tax­pay­ers’ mon­ey would flow to crim­i­nals, so ex­cuse me to­day for see­ing them for what they are—try­ing to play pol­i­tics.”

He not­ed that even the UNC leader and her part­ner at the UNC an­ti-crime con­sul­ta­tion couldn’t even agree on the SoE.

He al­so said de­clar­ing crim­i­nals “ter­ror­ist,” a sug­ges­tion by NTA leader Gary Grif­fith at the UNC meet­ing, wasn’t a re­al­is­tic arrange­ment. He al­so said he was shocked to see the ques­tion at the UNC’s con­sul­ta­tion of whether coastal pa­trols are sat­is­fac­to­ry, “from peo­ple who gave away our OPVs...”

Row­ley al­so said one had to con­sid­er if the mur­der toll is what it is now, what it might have been if there was no se­cu­ri­ty push­back. He said At­tor­ney Gen­er­al Regi­nald Ar­mour will soon say what new laws are com­ing on crime and on na­tion­al de­vel­op­ments.

Among is­sues on the crime sit­u­a­tion, Row­ley said there has been some dis­ap­point­ment that jus­tice isn’t dis­pensed with the speed as crime oc­curs.

He said he felt that some crim­i­nals would have thought twice about the ac­tion they’d have tak­en, had they been con­vinced the con­se­quences would have been re­al and harsh.

“But as Gov­ern­ment, we’re lim­it­ed to what we can do,” he added.

Row­ley al­so dis­missed as “ridicu­lous!” Per­sad-Bisses­sar’s claim that those us­ing guns are be­ing pro­tect­ed by Gov­ern­ment. He said the UNC didn’t want an abate­ment of the crime and Gov­ern­ment couldn’t get their sup­port on things like the Bail Bill.

Row­ley said the Gov­ern­ment had moved with alacrity to meet the UNC on an­ti-crime talks, tak­ing the lead in of­fer­ing the Op­po­si­tion a pos­si­ble arrange­ment for the talks, named a team and the AG as con­venor. How­ev­er, he said there was no UNC re­sponse on its team.

“All we got was a let­ter of bom­bast and per­son­al at­tacks on the mem­bers of our teams ... and noth­ing has hap­pened with that.”

He said he’d seen a lot of calls for Gov­ern­ment and Op­po­si­tion to “be­have and come to­geth­er” as “so much” was rid­ing on the meet­ing. He said that was just a pal­lia­tive of or­a­to­ry and crim­i­nals who were out to fright­en and kill peo­ple to make a liv­ing won’t stop what they’re do­ing if he was talk­ing to some­body or they were talk­ing to him.

He said there was buy-in with the of­fi­cers of state in Par­lia­ment be­ing able to talk with the hope of com­mon ground to make changes to in­tro­duce ac­tion that would give the state’s in­ter­est greater strength against crim­i­nals. How­ev­er, he said Gov­ern­ment can’t pass that re­spon­si­bil­i­ty to oth­er peo­ple who choose not to par­tic­i­pate in the an­ti-crime talks and it has to con­tin­ue to func­tion us­ing the state re­sources and pa­ra­me­ters of law.

He said every­one knows about the crime sit­u­a­tion af­fect­ing T&T.

“As the Gov­ern­ment, we have a re­spon­si­bil­i­ty to mo­bilise the state re­sources with­in T&T’s laws that were craft­ed to treat with crim­i­nal con­duct. It’s not a free for all, we can’t just do as we please. Even in treat­ing with crim­i­nals, we’re hav­ing to work with­in the con­fines of the law and we don’t have lim­it­less re­sources—we don’t have a po­lice of­fi­cer to stand by every gate...”