Three days ago, the Op­po­si­tion Leader cau­tioned the pop­u­la­tion that the State is now polic­ing both free­dom of move­ment and ex­pres­sion un­der the guise of safe­ty. She was re­fer­ring to Sec­tion 11 of the Emer­gency Pow­er Reg­u­la­tions gov­ern­ing the lat­est State of Emer­gency (SoE), which can crim­i­nalise pub­li­ca­tions, in­clud­ing so­cial me­dia posts.

I am a firm be­liev­er in free­dom of the press. Opin­ions on so­cial me­dia can be both re­veal­ing and fright­en­ing. A young man grow­ing up in a se­cure neigh­bour­hood, with a sta­ble fam­i­ly, reg­u­lar meals and ma­te­r­i­al com­forts, will view so­ci­ety dif­fer­ent­ly from some­one who is hun­gry most of the time, liv­ing in cramped con­di­tions and watch­ing a sin­gle moth­er strug­gle to make ends meet. One may see T&T as a par­adise, the oth­er as an in­escapable hell.

Hear­ing pain, angst and in­se­cu­ri­ty can be ed­u­ca­tion­al for pol­i­cy­mak­ers and for the pub­lic. Some crit­i­cisms may be gen­uine; some de­signed to in­flame ten­sions. But sup­press­ing crit­i­cal voic­es en­tire­ly is not the an­swer. At the same time, hate speech can ce­ment patho­log­i­cal think­ing, in­flu­ence men­tal­ly un­sta­ble in­di­vid­u­als and mo­bilise on­line mobs. Ha­rass­ment, threats and in­cite­ment to vi­o­lence can­not be tol­er­at­ed.

Dur­ing the last SoE, the Gov­ern­ment is­sued pre­ven­ta­tive de­ten­tion or­ders for in­di­vid­u­als who made threat­en­ing or il­le­gal so­cial me­dia posts. One ex­am­ple was Alian­na Sama­roo, who was ar­rest­ed af­ter call­ing on the Venezue­lan Pres­i­dent to kill our Prime Min­is­ter. Then there was Olive Green-Jack, who al­leged­ly cir­cu­lat­ed a pho­to­graph of the Prime Min­is­ter’s res­i­dence urg­ing the Venezue­lan gov­ern­ment to “tar­get” the home.

There must clear­ly be lim­its.

In 375 BC, Pla­to warned in The Re­pub­lic that a so­ci­ety which tol­er­ates every voice with­out re­straint may even­tu­al­ly be dom­i­nat­ed by its loud­est, most ex­treme and in­tol­er­ant voic­es.

At­tor­ney and MP Kei­th Scot­land ques­tioned: “Who de­cides what a per­son has ut­tered in what­ev­er man­ner is prej­u­di­cial to pub­lic safe­ty?” His con­cern is valid. Yet he al­so served in gov­ern­ment when in­struc­tions were giv­en to “kid­nap” Brent Thomas, and when Christo­pher “Chris Must List” Hugh­es was charged with sedi­tion af­ter his blog showed sev­er­al young men bran­dish­ing guns. Hugh­es’ at­tor­ney, Criston Williams, said threats had been made against his client by politi­cians and po­lice of­fi­cers.

All of this oc­curred out­side a SoE. Scot­land, there­fore, un­der­stands the po­ten­tial for po­lice over­reach and the po­lit­i­cal weapon­i­sa­tion of law en­force­ment. But politi­cians of­ten change their tune de­pend­ing on which side of the par­lia­men­tary aisle they oc­cu­py.

Un­der these new reg­u­la­tions, of­fi­cers may im­pose cur­fews on in­di­vid­u­als, re­strict where a per­son may live, work or trav­el, lim­it whom they may as­so­ciate with, and bar them from cer­tain ar­eas.

But trust in law en­force­ment is frag­ile. Many re­mem­ber the case in­volv­ing of­fi­cer Clarence Gilkes, who was killed and whose death was ma­li­cious­ly blamed on an in­no­cent man.

In March 2023, ad­dress­ing the Ch­agua­nas Cham­ber of In­dus­try and Com­merce, then CoP Er­la Hare­wood-Christo­pher promised a ze­ro-tol­er­ance ap­proach to po­lice cor­rup­tion. She not­ed that sev­er­al Cen­tral Di­vi­sion of­fi­cers had been ar­rest­ed and charged for cor­rup­tion.

Yet, last week, Ch­agua­nas Po­lice Sta­tion was placed on lock­down af­ter two bricks of mar­i­jua­na were stolen. The in­ci­dent was con­nect­ed to a case in which a Venezue­lan man was killed by po­lice. A sim­i­lar in­ci­dent oc­curred last year at the Barataria Po­lice Sta­tion, and some years ago, drugs and am­mu­ni­tion were dis­cov­ered hid­den in the ceil­ing of St Joseph Po­lice Sta­tion.

Be­fore the po­lice at­tempt to purge gangs from our com­mu­ni­ties, they must first purge cor­rup­tion with­in their own ranks.

Some cit­i­zens, there­fore, ques­tion whether the de­tailed scruti­ny of peo­ple’s phones and so­cial me­dia chats is nec­es­sary, as such pow­ers could eas­i­ly be abused by ego­tis­ti­cal and cor­rupt of­fi­cers.

In a No­vem­ber 25 me­dia re­lease, Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice Al­lis­ter Gue­var­ro in­formed so­cial me­dia users that the Cy­ber and So­cial Me­dia Unit is ac­tive­ly mon­i­tor­ing on­line ac­tiv­i­ty and gath­er­ing ev­i­dence on those who is­sue threats or at­tempt to desta­bilise the coun­try. Gue­var­ro was quick to charge a man with three counts of threat­en­ing to kill Sen­a­tor Dr Amery Browne in a Face­book post. The ca­pa­bil­i­ty al­ready clear­ly ex­ists to track crim­i­nal ac­tiv­i­ty on­line, in­clud­ing drug and am­mu­ni­tion trans­ac­tions.

Gue­var­ro al­so em­pha­sised that “free­dom of ex­pres­sion is a right, but that free­dom ends where crim­i­nal con­duct be­gins.”

Af­ter the mur­der of Ger­man politi­cian Wal­ter Lübcke by a sup­port­er of the far-right AfD par­ty, Ger­man politi­cian Ute Vogt warned: “We’re see­ing the po­lit­i­cal de­bate be­come more ag­gres­sive, more polem­i­cal. We’re see­ing less fac­tu­al de­bate and more ag­gres­sive pos­tu­lat­ing of po­si­tions, and that leads to peo­ple feel­ing they have to take ac­tion. That’s a dev­as­tat­ing de­vel­op­ment for our democ­ra­cy.”