Min­is­ter of En­er­gy and En­er­gy In­dus­tries Stu­art Young has dis­missed the idea of a state of emer­gency (SoE).

The call for a re­turn to a SoE was made by Op­po­si­tion Leader Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar at the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress’ (UNC) An­ti-crime Town Hall Meet­ing on Mon­day night.

Po­lit­i­cal An­a­lyst Dr In­di­ra Ram­per­sad had ini­tial­ly broached the idea when she ad­dressed the gath­er­ing and it was lat­er sup­port­ed by Per­sad-Bisses­sar, who not­ed that a sim­i­lar ini­tia­tive in 2011 by her Peo­ple’s Part­ner­ship gov­ern­ment had yield­ed re­sults in the fight against crime at that time.

How­ev­er, speak­ing to mem­bers of the me­dia last night at a Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM) mix­er at Bal­isi­er House, Port-of-Spain, Min­is­ter Young poured cold wa­ter to the idea of a re­turn to such a sce­nario.

He said when he woke up on yes­ter­day, he read what was re­port­ed on the UNC meet­ing as it re­lat­ed to the call­ing of a SoE as a so­lu­tion to the ris­ing crime prob­lem.

“But no one coun­tered that with the truth of what the 2011 State of Emer­gency re­al­ly was, the num­ber of law­suits that flowed through it, the il­le­gal­i­ty of it et cetera and those are the things we the cit­i­zens are count­ing on you all (the me­dia) to re­mind us of and to pro­vide the truth and put aside the nar­ra­tives that can’t be sup­port­ed,” Young said.

Mean­while, Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley is putting the Op­po­si­tion and the na­tion on no­tice that he plans to re­spond to the is­sue of crime talks at a PNM meet­ing in San Juan to­mor­row night.

He re­fused to deal with the SoE is­sue at the event but as­sured the me­dia that he would speak on it then.

Ac­cord­ing to fig­ures pro­vid­ed by then na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty min­is­ter John Sandy in the Sen­ate, of the 8,178 peo­ple ar­rest­ed dur­ing the Au­gust 21-De­cem­ber 5, 2011, SoE, 7,044 were charged.

Some of the of­fences in­clud­ed se­ri­ous crimes, mi­nor crimes, mi­nor of­fences, of­fences un­der the An­ti-Gang Act, breach of cur­few, out­stand­ing war­rants and homi­cide in­ves­ti­ga­tions.

How­ev­er, there were sev­er­al law­suits filed af­ter peo­ple who were charged were or­dered re­leased by the courts.

In one in­stance in Oc­to­ber 2019, a High Court Judge award­ed a to­tal of $279,000 in com­pen­sa­tion to three men from Cumana Vil­lage, To­co, who were ar­rest­ed and de­tained on gang charges dur­ing the SoE.

In an­oth­er mat­ter, a Vista­bel­la man who was charged with be­ing a gang mem­ber was award­ed more than $250,000 by Jus­tice Na­dia Kan­ga­loo.

In award­ing the com­pen­sa­tion to Ken Gre­sham, Jus­tice Kan­ga­loo said a mes­sage had to be sent to po­lice of­fi­cers that in ar­rest­ing peo­ple, they must be vig­i­lant and not mere­ly en­gage in a rub­ber-stamp­ing process.