Shane Su­perville

Se­nior Re­porter

shane.su­perville@guardian.co.tt

While he is un­able to say for cer­tain whether the on­go­ing State of Emer­gency (SoE) will be ex­tend­ed, Min­is­ter of Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty Roger Alexan­der says more long-term re­sults are ex­pect­ed through con­tin­ued law en­force­ment ac­tiv­i­ties.

The SoE was de­clared on Ju­ly 18 in re­sponse to a pur­port­ed plot by crim­i­nals to tar­get high-rank­ing of­fi­cials in the Gov­ern­ment, ju­di­cia­ry and na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty. It was orig­i­nal­ly ex­pect­ed to end af­ter 15 days of its de­c­la­ra­tion, but an ex­ten­sion of three months was grant­ed on Ju­ly 28. The SoE is there­fore ex­pect­ed to end in late Oc­to­ber.

Speak­ing with Guardian Me­dia yes­ter­day, Alexan­der said he could not say for cer­tain whether a sec­ond ex­ten­sion of the SoE was pos­si­ble, but main­tained that law en­force­ment want­ed to achieve more per­ma­nent re­sults in dis­rupt­ing crim­i­nal net­works.

He ac­knowl­edged that while there has been sig­nif­i­cant progress in tack­ling or­gan­ised crime, ad­di­tion­al ef­forts would achieve more long-term re­sults.

“If I de­stroy some­thing there’s no com­ing back af­ter that. So, we are at the stage where we are look­ing to de­stroy these net­works, not just dis­man­tle,” he said.

“What we are look­ing for now is a more per­ma­nent im­pact on what we have dis­cov­ered, with the in­ten­tion of it nev­er re­turn­ing or even the thought of it en­ter­ing a per­son’s head.”

Asked what would be re­quired to achieve a to­tal de­struc­tion of these crim­i­nal groups, Alexan­der said it would in­volve sev­er­al ini­tia­tives work­ing in tan­dem, but did not di­vulge what these ac­tiv­i­ties would in­volve.

He, how­ev­er, con­firmed that lo­cal au­thor­i­ties were re­ceiv­ing as­sis­tance from for­eign agen­cies as they push for long-term se­cu­ri­ty so­lu­tions.

Re­fer­ring to the evolv­ing trends in smug­gling and traf­fick­ing in the re­gion, Alexan­der said drugs from South Amer­i­ca weren’t the on­ly items be­ing shipped through T&T, as il­le­gal guns from both the US and South Amer­i­ca were be­ing smug­gled.

Alexan­der said this added to the com­plex­i­ty of the chal­lenges and said he felt it war­rant­ed more con­sis­tent pres­sure from law en­force­ment.

How­ev­er, Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment chair and for­mer Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty min­is­ter Mar­vin Gon­za­les yes­ter­day rub­bished Alexan­der’s ex­pla­na­tion, not­ing that a need to see long-term re­sults from the SoE di­rect­ly con­tra­dict­ed ear­li­er com­ments made by the Gov­ern­ment, who not­ed the SoE was de­clared in re­sponse to an im­me­di­ate threat.

He ac­cused the Gov­ern­ment of is­su­ing state­ments that led to more con­fu­sion among the pub­lic, and urged them to state clear­ly what led to the de­c­la­ra­tion of the SoE.

“This is con­fir­ma­tion that the Gov­ern­ment sim­ply doesn’t know what it is do­ing and the Min­is­ter of Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty con­tin­ues to make state­ments which con­flict with what they told the Par­lia­ment and the peo­ple of T&T, that this was not a crime-fight­ing mea­sure,” Gon­za­les said.

“They said this was called specif­i­cal­ly to deal with a par­tic­u­lar threat that ex­ists at this point in time, so the Min­is­ter of Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty should now tell the peo­ple whether the State of Emer­gency has dealt with the is­sue of the spe­cif­ic threat and whether the Gov­ern­ment wants a new state of emer­gency to deal with the crim­i­nal el­e­ment in the coun­try.”

He not­ed that if the pur­port­ed threat posed by crim­i­nal gangs to­wards high-rank­ing of­fi­cials was neu­tralised, then Gov­ern­ment had no need for it to re­main in ef­fect.

How­ev­er, for­mer po­lice com­mis­sion­er Gary Grif­fith yes­ter­day warned that while the fi­nal de­ci­sion to ex­tend the SoE be­longed to the au­thor­i­ties, he felt more long-term plan­ning should be done to main­tain law and or­der with­out the need for spe­cial reg­u­la­tions.

“What usu­al­ly hap­pens is when the SoE ends, these same in­di­vid­u­als are more brazen and crime will in­ten­si­fy. So, is it that it may be re­quired to be ex­tend­ed? Maybe that’s the call of the present law en­force­ment agen­cies, who would un­der­stand if the SoE is called off, would crime es­ca­late.

“My take on it is the law en­force­ment agen­cies must see what can be done with­out a pres­i­den­tial procla­ma­tion.”