Shane Su­perville

Se­nior Re­porter

shane.su­perville@guardian.co.tt

De­fence Min­is­ter Wayne Sturge has dou­bled down on the Gov­ern­ment's in­tro­duc­tion of the Spe­cial Op­er­a­tions Bill as a crime-fight­ing mea­sure, chal­leng­ing crit­ics of the strat­e­gy who have de­scribed it as the first step to­wards a "po­lice state," to con­sid­er the al­ter­na­tive as a "ban­dit state" ruled by vi­o­lent crim­i­nals.

The Bill was passed in the Low­er House with a sim­ple ma­jor­i­ty ear­ly on Sat­ur­day morn­ing.

It re­places the de­feat­ed Zones of Spe­cial Op­er­a­tions (ZOSO) Bill, and es­tab­lish­es sev­en polic­ing dis­tricts na­tion­wide and al­lows the Pres­i­dent to de­clare "closed ar­eas" and cur­fews by or­der once an ap­pli­ca­tion is made by the Min­is­ter of Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty.

Sturge ap­peared on a tele­vised morn­ing news pro­gramme yes­ter­day where he clar­i­fied some as­pects of the strat­e­gy, while de­fend­ing pro­vi­sions that al­lowed lim­it­ed ar­eas to be closed or cor­doned off in a bid to quell the move­ment of crim­i­nals and il­lic­it items.

Re­fer­ring to a spate of mur­ders in Sec­ond Cale­do­nia, Mor­vant, last week, Sturge said it was im­prac­ti­cal for the au­thor­i­ties to de­clare such a large ge­o­graph­ic area as an area of spe­cial op­er­a­tions giv­en man­pow­er con­straints.

He not­ed, how­ev­er, that even with the de­ploy­ment of po­lice, safe­guards in­clud­ing the manda­to­ry use of Body-Worn Cam­eras as pro­vid­ed for in the Bill would be used in tan­dem with sup­port from the Po­lice Com­plaints Au­thor­i­ty (PCA) and the TTPS Pro­fes­sion­al Stan­dards Bu­reau (PSB) to en­sure of­fi­cers act­ed pro­fes­sion­al­ly.

For this rea­son, Sturge re­spond­ed to crit­ics of the Bill, ar­gu­ing that it was a nec­es­sary arrange­ment to ef­fec­tive­ly sub­due crime.

"It's not that it's go­ing to be the wild, wild west or a po­lice state or any­thing like that and for the peo­ple who make this noise about a po­lice state... what do they rather, a ban­dit state?

"What do you rather, not that the po­lice come to your area and you can move freely, you don't have to wor­ry about your chil­dren get­ting shot when they go out to play foot­ball over some beef?

"What do you rather, the gang­ster con­trols the area? The gang­ster who doesn't have much ed­u­ca­tion and un­able to rea­son things out, and on a whim de­cides, 'Look, this man rat­ting on me, so I go­ing and kill he,' this is a civilised so­ci­ety; we have to take the coun­try back."

Sturge said if a des­ig­nat­ed area was iden­ti­fied as a hotbed for crime and vi­o­lence, it could be closed off by the po­lice, while law-abid­ing cit­i­zens would be al­lowed to leave and en­ter with a per­mit, not­ing that the sys­tem in place would al­low them to ap­ply for and re­ceive these per­mits via What­sApp or email.

While he did not re­veal which num­ber or email ad­dress res­i­dents would have to ap­ply to, he said per­mits for move­ment could be is­sued and re­voked us­ing these plat­forms.

In sit­u­a­tions where in­ter­net ac­cess was lim­it­ed, he said peo­ple could al­so leave a des­ig­nat­ed area by sim­ply speak­ing with se­nior po­lice of­fi­cers as­signed at check­points and ex­plain­ing to them the rea­son for leav­ing and re-en­ter­ing.

He al­so said the au­thor­i­ties were mind­ful of sit­u­a­tions where crim­i­nals would try to work around cor­dons by forc­ing law-abid­ing cit­i­zens with per­mits to act as “mules” to smug­gle guns and drugs across bar­ri­ers.

Sturge said in such sit­u­a­tions, po­lice of­fi­cers would be vig­i­lant and use their dis­cre­tion on a case-by-case ba­sis.

"If you see Tan­ty is strug­gling with a heavy bag go­ing to the mar­ket or doc­tor, you say 'Tan­ty, you want help with that?' and then you peek in and see a black noz­zle (of a gun).

"You have to give the po­lice cred­it; they do this every day, and the thing is you will look at Tan­ty's de­meanour; she's not do­ing this will­ing­ly; she's sweat­ing pro­fuse­ly. There are many ways and I don't want to spell them out. The law re­quires there is rea­son­able sus­pi­cion."

He con­tend­ed that such an ap­proach to search­ing peo­ple act­ing sus­pi­cious­ly was not lim­it­ed to the Spe­cial Op­er­a­tions Bill, as it was al­so ap­plic­a­ble in any sit­u­a­tion where po­lice sus­pect­ed some­thing was wrong.

Com­mu­ni­ty ac­tivist op­posed to po­lice vs ban­dit state dilem­ma

How­ev­er, when con­tact­ed for com­ment, gen­er­al man­ag­er of the ROOTS Foun­da­tion Mti­ma Sol­wazi took is­sue with Sturge's com­par­i­son of a po­lice state ver­sus a hy­po­thet­i­cal "ban­dit state," not­ing that it was un­fair for the pub­lic to choose one as both were harm­ful.

Sol­wazi, who has worked along­side at-risk youth, pro­mot­ing com­mu­ni­ty-based so­cial in­ter­ven­tions as a means of crime-fight­ing, said that while he was not op­posed to the Gov­ern­ment's ef­forts to tack­le vi­o­lent crime, he felt the cost of flush­ing out crim­i­nals from neigh­bour­hoods should not be to lock down an area to achieve it.

"We don't want ei­ther and it is very un­fair to put on the pop­u­la­tion, 'Choose one.'

"Of course we don't want a ban­dit state and if re­mov­ing those el­e­ments of gang­sters and crim­i­nals means that we have to have a po­lice state... Oh gosh man... there are oth­er ways.

"Don't tell me we have to choose be­tween a po­lice state or a ban­dit state. We are choos­ing none."

Re­fer­ring to the re­cent­ly launched TTPS an­ti-bul­ly­ing ini­tia­tive ti­tled Flip the Script, Sol­wazi said such pro­grammes should be en­cour­aged and repli­cat­ed as a vi­able means of tack­ling crime with­out force­ful means.

Sol­wazi said ad­di­tion­al clar­i­fi­ca­tion was need­ed for the per­mit sys­tem with­in des­ig­nat­ed zones as he was un­clear on how long such per­mits would be valid for.

"Am I get­ting a week­ly per­mit? Is it a month­ly per­mit, or is it every day I have to ap­ply for a per­mit to go to work?"

He al­so re­spond­ed to Sturge's de­scrip­tion of an el­der­ly woman or 'Tan­ty' be­ing pos­si­bly co­erced by crim­i­nals in­to car­ry­ing guns and the need for the po­lice to be aware of such tricks, not­ing that a sim­ple er­rand could be a drawn-out, com­pli­cat­ed ven­ture for some peo­ple, with­out hav­ing any sin­is­ter mo­tives.

Sol­diers can be called on for back­up

Sturge al­so said that while the po­lice could es­tab­lish these zones with or with­out the sup­port of the mil­i­tary, sol­diers could be called up­on to as­sist crime-fight­ing op­er­a­tions de­pend­ing on man­pow­er, the type of ter­rain with­in a des­ig­nat­ed area and the type of risk po­lice of­fi­cers would be ex­posed to.

He said that while each sit­u­a­tion would be as­sessed on it's own mer­it and the cir­cum­stances to en­sure the safe­ty of of­fi­cers, he ac­knowl­edged the dan­ger and re­sis­tance of­fi­cers could face while on du­ty.

"Some­times the po­lice would go in­to an area and they would have cer­tain types of weapons and they would be out­gunned by peo­ple who have big­ger guns or bet­ter guns and at that point you have to bring in back­up.

"Not in all sit­u­a­tions the army would be brought in... they would be brought in if, for in­stance, they are out­gunned, if there is a man­pow­er is­sue or if they have to go in­to a cer­tain type of ter­rain like the jun­gle or so on... the po­lice do not have that type of every­day train­ing but the army... they are in the bush every day."

Sturge main­tained that on any joint ex­er­cise the po­lice would as­sume a lead­er­ship role, while de­fence force per­son­nel would be in a sup­port­ive ca­pac­i­ty.

When con­tact­ed for com­ment, re­tired DCP Op­er­a­tions Jayson Forde said joint po­lice-army ex­er­cis­es were not new to crime-fight­ing ini­tia­tives, not­ing that such a de­ploy­ment would re­quire a risk as­sess­ment.

"The army forms part of our na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty in­fra­struc­ture and if the pow­ers that be feel that the army is need­ed to as­sist, they will work out their lo­gis­tics and bring them in as they see fit.

"So it comes down to the sit­u­a­tion... you have to analyse the sit­u­a­tion, so it's not the first time or the last time the de­fence force will be as­sist­ing in any kind of op­er­a­tions."

Forde said he pre­ferred to re­serve com­ment on the de­tails of the Spe­cial Op­er­a­tions Bill un­til he read the amend­ments and new pro­vi­sions him­self, but stressed that any an­ti-crime strat­e­gy would be done with the in­ten­tion of im­prov­ing so­ci­ety.