One month af­ter the ex­pi­ra­tion of the State of Emer­gency (SOE), T&T’s com­mer­cial heart­land is as­sess­ing the se­cu­ri­ty land­scape with cau­tious at­ten­tion.

The rel­a­tive qui­et that ac­com­pa­nied emer­gency pow­ers has giv­en way to fa­mil­iar con­cerns about polic­ing ca­pac­i­ty, crim­i­nal ac­tiv­i­ty and the broad­er en­vi­ron­ment for busi­ness op­er­a­tions.

From the bustling streets of down­town Port-of-Spain to the in­dus­tri­al cor­ri­dors of Ch­agua­nas and the strate­gic com­mer­cial hubs of Tu­na­puna and San Fer­nan­do, pri­vate sec­tor lead­ers note that while the SOE cre­at­ed a short-term shift in con­di­tions, it did not ad­dress the un­der­ly­ing is­sues that con­tin­ue to shape safe­ty, com­merce and in­vestor con­fi­dence.

Gre­go­ry Aboud, pres­i­dent of the Down­town Own­ers and Mer­chants As­so­ci­a­tion (DO­MA), has adopt­ed a mea­sured yet crit­i­cal view of the SOE’s ef­fec­tive­ness, ar­gu­ing that its im­pact on dai­ly life in the cap­i­tal was min­i­mal. For many res­i­dents and busi­nes­sown­ers in Port-of-Spain, he sug­gest­ed, the emer­gency mea­sures nei­ther pro­duced sub­stan­tial im­prove­ments nor wors­ened dai­ly con­di­tions.

“We do not, at this time, feel any sig­nif­i­cant dif­fer­ence in terms of the law and or­der sit­u­a­tion in Port of Spain since the end of the SOE,” he said, not­ing that even dur­ing the pe­ri­od of height­ened re­stric­tions, in­ci­dents of brazen law­less­ness con­tin­ued—and were of­ten cap­tured on video.

This sense of con­ti­nu­ity, rather than re­lief, un­der­scores DO­MA’s long-stand­ing view that de­c­la­ra­tions of emer­gency pow­ers can­not sub­sti­tute for con­sis­tent, dis­ci­plined law en­force­ment.

For Aboud, the is­sue has nev­er been the ab­sence of au­thor­i­ty, but the in­con­sis­tent or in­ef­fec­tive ex­er­cise of it.

“If they have the au­thor­i­ty to stop and search, if they have the au­thor­i­ty to pa­trol, if they have the au­thor­i­ty to ar­rest with cause, and they are not ex­er­cis­ing that au­thor­i­ty, the so­ci­ety should be cau­tious about giv­ing ad­di­tion­al au­thor­i­ty to those who are not ex­er­cis­ing or us­ing the that they al­ready have,” he cau­tioned.

Ques­tions sur­round­ing the ex­pan­sion of po­lice pow­ers are fur­ther com­pli­cat­ed by re­cur­ring de­bate over the reg­i­ment’s role in in­ter­nal se­cu­ri­ty.

Aboud re­it­er­at­ed DO­MA’s po­si­tion that while joint mil­i­tary po­lice pa­trols have a place in main­tain­ing vis­i­bil­i­ty and de­ter­rence, the pow­er of ar­rest must re­main with the po­lice.

Any­thing else, he ar­gued, risks breach­ing con­sti­tu­tion­al norms and pro­ject­ing an un­sta­ble im­age to in­ter­na­tion­al part­ners.

This con­cern about per­cep­tion is not the­o­ret­i­cal.

Aboud dis­closed that last year’s re­new­al of the SOE had al­ready caused at least one multi­na­tion­al cor­po­ra­tion to with­draw a ma­jor in­vest­ment in­quiry.

“An SOE is ob­vi­ous­ly a very se­ri­ous in­dict­ment of a coun­try’s na­tion­al af­fairs. It means that the au­thor­i­ties of the day re­quire spe­cial pow­ers to con­trol nor­mal day-to-day ac­tiv­i­ties in a coun­try,” he said.

Be­yond the in­ter­nal me­chan­ics of polic­ing, these “red flag” Aboud said ex­tends in­to the realm of in­ter­na­tion­al com­merce and the coun­try’s rep­u­ta­tion as a sta­ble in­vest­ment des­ti­na­tion.

He re­vealed at least one in­ter­na­tion­al firm, which had been ex­plor­ing op­por­tu­ni­ties in T&T, with­drew its in­ter­est sole­ly be­cause of the con­tin­ued state of emer­gency.

“They had pre­vi­ous­ly in­di­cat­ed they would wait un­til the end of the SOE. And then when the SOE was re­newed, at the time that it was re­newed, for the last pe­ri­od that just ex­pired, they in­di­cat­ed their head of­fice had de­cid­ed and in­struct­ed them to can­cel their in­ter­est in the in­vest­ment,” Aboud ex­plained.

Uptick in crime af­ter SOE

While Port of Spain con­tends with rep­u­ta­tion­al fall­out, the anx­i­eties in cen­tral Trinidad are root­ed in im­me­di­ate dan­ger.

The Ch­agua­nas Cham­ber of In­dus­try and Com­merce (CCIC) re­port­ed a sharp resur­gence of vi­o­lent crime in the weeks since the SOE end­ed, de­scrib­ing the emer­gency pe­ri­od as lit­tle more than a “tem­po­rary ban­dage.”

CCIC pres­i­dent Bal­dath Ma­haraj has raised an alarm over a rapid uptick in mur­ders and gang ac­tiv­i­ty in the short weeks since full con­sti­tu­tion­al free­doms re­turned.

Ma­haraj said crim­i­nal el­e­ments were mere­ly sup­pressed, not dis­man­tled, and are now ag­gres­sive­ly look­ing to re­claim lost ter­ri­to­ry.

This resur­gence of crime in the cen­tral bor­ough has cre­at­ed an en­vi­ron­ment where the high cost of se­cu­ri­ty is be­gin­ning to out­weigh the po­ten­tial for prof­it.

“We are see­ing an in­crease in se­ri­ous crime and re­ports of in­creased gang ac­tiv­i­ty. This is a di­rect threat to in­vestor con­fi­dence, when the cost of do­ing busi­ness with pri­vate se­cu­ri­ty and the con­stant risk of vi­o­lent crime, long term eco­nom­ic growth in­evitably stalls. Our mem­bers are al­ready re­port­ing in­creased fear, with some busi­ness­es be­ing con­cerned about em­ploy­ees and cus­tomers get­ting home safe­ly for late shifts.

“Most crit­i­cal­ly, we must recog­nise that pri­vate sec­tor in­vest­ment will be se­vere­ly af­fect­ed by this volatile se­cu­ri­ty cli­mate. This in­vest­ment is most need­ed now to di­ver­si­fy our econ­o­my and make up for the sig­nif­i­cant short­fall in gas and oil rev­enues. We can­not ex­pect lo­cal or for­eign in­vestors to pour cap­i­tal in­to busi­ness where their as­sets and per­son­nel are un­der con­stant threat. A stag­nant econ­o­my, starved of pri­vate in­vest­ment due to crime, cre­ates a deep­er cy­cle of pover­ty and fur­ther law­less­ness,” Ma­haraj said.

De­spite these grow­ing chal­lenges, the Ch­agua­nas Cham­ber is not call­ing for a re­in­state­ment of a full State of Emer­gency.

“We recog­nise that a na­tion-wide SoE is an in­stru­ment that, if used for too long, drains the econ­o­my, ham­pers our in­ter­na­tion­al rep­u­ta­tion, and in­curs mas­sive costs to the tax­pay­er. How­ev­er, we can­not sim­ply re­turn to the busi­ness-as-usu­al ap­proach. The vac­u­um left by the SOE must be re­placed with a more sus­tain­able strat­e­gy that tar­gets the root of the prob­lem with­out paralysing the en­tire coun­try,” Ma­haraj said.

He added that Ch­agua­nas is still deeply in­ter­est­ed in the im­ple­men­ta­tion of Zones of Spe­cial Op­er­a­tions (ZOSO), adding that tar­get­ed, high in­ten­si­ty polic­ing in known crime hotspot ar­eas com­bined with im­me­di­ate so­cial in­ter­ven­tion is the a vi­able path for­ward. e.

The eco­nom­ic anx­i­ety felt in Ch­agua­nas finds a qui­eter, though no less per­sis­tent, echo in the east­ern com­mer­cial hub of Tu­na­puna as the sen­ti­ment is more mea­sured but equal­ly vig­i­lant.

Spillover ef­fects

The Greater Tu­na­puna Cham­ber of In­dus­try and Com­merce (GT­CIC)) pres­i­dent Ra­mon Gre­go­rio re­port­ed that while there has not been clear em­pir­i­cal ev­i­dence of a dra­mat­ic crime spike specif­i­cal­ly with­in the bor­ough since the SOE end­ed, con­cern re­mains high re­gard­ing “spillover ef­fects” from na­tion­al trends.

“Some busi­ness­es re­port a cau­tious con­sumer mood, with spend­ing pat­terns still some­what con­ser­v­a­tive, par­tic­u­lar­ly dur­ing evening hours.

Op­er­a­tional­ly, busi­ness­es con­tin­ue to ab­sorb high­er se­cu­ri­ty costs as a pre­cau­tion­ary mea­sure. The cham­ber be­lieves it is im­por­tant to dis­tin­guish be­tween per­cep­tion and ver­i­fied da­ta. At present, avail­able anec­do­tal feed­back sug­gests vig­i­lance, not pan­ic,” he ex­plained.

Op­er­a­tional­ly, Gre­go­rio shared that Tu­na­puna busi­ness­es con­tin­ue to ab­sorb high­er se­cu­ri­ty costs as a pre­cau­tion­ary mea­sure, not­ing that while the SOE pro­vid­ed a short-term sense of in­creased se­cu­ri­ty pres­ence, it was nev­er a stand­alone so­lu­tion for com­mer­cial ex­pan­sion.

In­stead, the GT­CIC is ad­vo­cat­ing for a bal­anced, da­ta-dri­ven ap­proach that in­cludes reg­u­lar pub­lic re­port­ing of crime sta­tis­tics by di­vi­sion to re­duce spec­u­la­tion and the main­te­nance of strate­gic pa­trols on the Tu­na­puna Main Road.

A sim­i­lar call for per­ma­nent, ev­i­dence-based so­lu­tions is emerg­ing from the south, where busi­ness lead­ers are weigh­ing the sta­tis­ti­cal suc­cess­es of the SOE against its long-term draw­backs.

Need for pre­dictabil­i­ty

Greater San Fer­nan­do Cham­ber of Com­merce (GS­FCC) pres­i­dent Ki­ran Singh aligned with the view that emer­gency mea­sures are, by their very na­ture, tem­po­rary and re­ac­tive.

The GS­FCC point­ed out that while the SOE led to a no­table sta­tis­ti­cal de­cline in mur­ders, the fall­out was se­vere, with sev­er­al coun­tries post­ing trav­el ad­vi­sories that im­pact­ed the na­tion­al tourism thrust. Al­though the gov­ern­ment re­port­ed im­proved vis­i­tor ar­rivals for Car­ni­val fes­tiv­i­ties—sup­port­ing the view that the SOE had some mea­sure of suc­cess—the GS­FCC leader main­tains that busi­ness­es re­quire pre­dictabil­i­ty and con­sis­ten­cy that an SOE can­not pro­vide.

The com­mon thread link­ing these four ma­jor com­mer­cial hubs is the ur­gent need to move be­yond emer­gency pow­ers to­ward a mod­ernised se­cu­ri­ty in­fra­struc­ture.

With the pro­pos­al for ZOSO cur­rent­ly stalled with­out Par­lia­men­tary ap­proval, the busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty is now call­ing for a per­ma­nent piv­ot to­ward struc­tur­al re­form.

The con­sen­sus is that the gov­ern­ment must find al­ter­na­tive, long-term strate­gies for crime erad­i­ca­tion that do not paral­yse the na­tion­al econ­o­my. This in­cludes in­tel­li­gence-led polic­ing, com­mu­ni­ty en­gage­ment, and mod­ern crime de­tec­tion tech­nol­o­gy.

The fo­cus on mod­ernising the state’s re­sponse is not lim­it­ed to polic­ing but ex­tends to the ju­di­cial sys­tem, where sys­temic de­lays are seen as a cat­a­lyst for re­peat of­fend­ing.

The CCIC leader specif­i­cal­ly high­light­ed the need for restora­tive jus­tice for first-time pet­ty of­fend­ers, ar­gu­ing that tra­di­tion­al im­pris­on­ment of­ten serves as a “groom­ing ground” where mi­nor of­fend­ers are shaped in­to ca­reer crim­i­nals. The GS­FCC echoed this need for so­cial in­ter­ven­tion, not­ing that crime pre­ven­tion must in­cor­po­rate youth de­vel­op­ment and tar­get­ed sup­port for vul­ner­a­ble com­mu­ni­ties to cre­ate a sta­ble en­vi­ron­ment for job cre­ation.