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Sunday, July 27, 2025

A look at SoEs in T&T over the last 20 years

by

9 days ago
20250718
From left, former police commissioner Dwayne Gibbs, former police commissioner Erla Harewood-Christopher and Police Commissioner Allister Guevarro.

From left, former police commissioner Dwayne Gibbs, former police commissioner Erla Harewood-Christopher and Police Commissioner Allister Guevarro.

Over the past two decades, Trinidad and To­ba­go has ex­pe­ri­enced mul­ti­ple states of emer­gency (SoEs), main­ly trig­gered by in­creas­es in vi­o­lent crime and, more re­cent­ly, the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic.

While the spe­cif­ic cir­cum­stances and ex­act mea­sures var­ied, here is a brief look at how they com­pare.

1. State of Emer­gency (2011) – Main­ly Fo­cused on Crime:

The Trig­ger: A no­table rise in vi­o­lent crime, es­pe­cial­ly in­volv­ing gangs and homi­cides.

The Mea­sures: This SOE saw the im­ple­men­ta­tion of a coun­try­wide cur­few as well as en­hanced au­thor­i­ty for law en­force­ment and mil­i­tary per­son­nel, which in­clud­ed war­rant­less search­es and swift ar­rests. Tem­po­rary de­ten­tion fa­cil­i­ties were es­tab­lished but al­though thou­sands were ap­pre­hend­ed, many were sub­se­quent­ly re­leased due to in­suf­fi­cient ev­i­dence.

The Im­pacts:

Short-term De­cline in Vi­o­lent Crime: Sta­tis­tics re­vealed a con­sid­er­able drop in trau­ma ad­mis­sions (gun­shot and stab wounds) at the na­tion­al trau­ma cen­tre dur­ing the State of Emer­gency.

Shift in Crime Dy­nam­ics: Af­ter the SoE was lift­ed, gun­shot wounds re­mained rel­a­tive­ly low, al­though there was an uptick in stab wounds, in­di­cat­ing a change in vi­o­lent be­hav­iour.

Hu­man Rights Is­sues: Re­ports of po­lice and mil­i­tary mis­con­duct, in­clud­ing ex­ces­sive force and un­law­ful de­ten­tions, raised alarms about hu­man rights vi­o­la­tions.

Bur­den on the Jus­tice Sys­tem: The large num­ber of ar­rests over­whelmed the re­mand fa­cil­i­ties.

Lim­it­ed Long-Term Re­sults: While the SoE was suc­cess­ful in the short term, it failed to elim­i­nate the fun­da­men­tal is­sues dri­ving crime, and vi­o­lent crime rates gen­er­al­ly be­gan to rise again once it was lift­ed.

2. State of Emer­gency (2021) – COVID-19 Re­lat­ed:

The Trig­ger: An in­tense third wave of COVID-19 cas­es and deaths.

Mea­sures: Tar­get­ed pub­lic health, in­volv­ing re­stric­tions on move­ment, busi­ness clo­sures, and lim­its on gath­er­ings to con­trol the virus’s spread. Al­though not di­rect­ly fo­cused on crime, these mea­sures had in­di­rect reper­cus­sions.

Im­pacts:

Pub­lic Health: Aimed at re­duc­ing COVID-19 trans­mis­sion and re­liev­ing pres­sure on the health­care sys­tem.

Eco­nom­ic Dis­rup­tion: A sig­nif­i­cant detri­men­tal ef­fect on the econ­o­my, es­pe­cial­ly on the tourism in­dus­try, small and medi­um busi­ness­es, and in­for­mal work­ers. An in­crease in un­em­ploy­ment and pover­ty was ex­pect­ed.

So­cial Im­pacts: Dis­rup­tion of crit­i­cal so­cial ser­vices, ed­u­ca­tion­al loss­es due to school clo­sures, and a rise in do­mes­tic vi­o­lence in­ci­dents due to en­forced co­hab­i­ta­tion and height­ened stress.

Vul­ner­a­ble Groups: Dis­pro­por­tion­ate­ly im­pact­ed were vul­ner­a­ble groups al­ready fac­ing eco­nom­ic strug­gles and so­cial in­equal­i­ties.

3. State of Emer­gency (De­cem­ber 2024/Ear­ly 2025) – Fo­cused on Crime:

The Trig­ger: A re­newed spike in vi­o­lent crime, par­tic­u­lar­ly gang-re­lat­ed mur­ders in­volv­ing high-cal­i­bre weapons, with 2024 es­tab­lish­ing new homi­cide records.

Mea­sures: Un­like pri­or SoEs, this one was ex­plic­it­ly de­clared to be free of cur­fews or re­stric­tions on pub­lic as­sem­blies. In­stead, it aimed at pro­vid­ing po­lice and mil­i­tary with en­hanced con­sti­tu­tion­al pow­ers specif­i­cal­ly to tar­get heav­i­ly armed crim­i­nals, ex­e­cute search­es and ar­rests with­out war­rants, and con­fis­cate il­le­gal firearms.

Im­pacts (Re­cent Ob­ser­va­tions):

Tar­get­ed Fo­cus: A more con­cen­trat­ed fo­cus on gang vi­o­lence and il­le­gal firearms, seek­ing to avoid the ex­ten­sive so­ci­etal dis­rup­tions of ear­li­er SoEs.

Po­ten­tial for Short-term De­cline: Ear­ly da­ta in­di­cat­ed a drop in homi­cides com­pared to the pre­vi­ous year, sug­gest­ing some im­me­di­ate in­flu­ence on the crime rate.

Un­der­ly­ing Is­sues: Econ­o­mists and so­cial an­thro­pol­o­gists em­pha­sise that or­gan­ised crime is con­nect­ed to wider so­cioe­co­nom­ic con­di­tions and the coun­try’s role as a trans­ship­ment point for il­lic­it goods, in­di­cat­ing that SOEs alone are not suf­fi­cient long-term reme­dies.

4. State of Emer­gency (Ju­ly 2025) – Crime-Re­lat­ed:

The Trig­ger: A spe­cif­ic threat be­lieved to be com­ing from crime syn­di­cates with­in the na­tion’s pris­ons.

Mea­sures: En­hanced au­thor­i­ty for law en­force­ment and mil­i­tary per­son­nel. No cur­few pro­posed in the ini­tial an­nounce­ment.


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