An­na-Lisa Paul

Se­nior Re­porter

an­na-lisa.paul@guardian.co.tt

The an­nounce­ment that the State of Emer­gency (SoE) will be ex­tend­ed in­to 2026 has been well re­ceived by at least one se­cu­ri­ty ex­pert, who is now ap­peal­ing to the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice (TTPS) to use the time to iden­ti­fy its goals for the next six months, while a sec­ond has as­cribed the SoE a “pass­ing grade.”

The Gov­ern­ment ex­tend­ed the SoE by a fur­ther three months on Fri­day af­ter a de­bate in par­lia­ment. This means T&T will go in­to the Christ­mas and Car­ni­val sea­sons un­der SoE re­stric­tions.

For­mer Na­tion­al Op­er­a­tions Cen­tre (NOC) head Dr Garvin Heer­ah wel­comed the de­ci­sion, but urged key law en­force­ment strate­gists to clear­ly out­line short-, medi­um- and long-term goals for the next cou­ple months. He said these goals could be used by cit­i­zens to, “mea­sure the ef­fi­ca­cy of the SoE and the per­for­mance of the TTPS.”

Not­ing that his year, “has seen a sig­nif­i­cant de­cline in se­ri­ous crimes and homi­cides, with re­duc­tions of up to 40 per cent be­ing re­port­ed,” he cau­tioned, “This im­prove­ment must be viewed with­in the wider con­text of the two States of Emer­gency (SoEs) that were im­posed dur­ing the pe­ri­od.”

Point­ing out that this was sim­i­lar to the pan­dem­ic years when re­stric­tions on move­ment and ac­tiv­i­ties pro­duced com­pa­ra­ble drops in crime, Heer­ah ac­knowl­edged, “The SoEs un­doubt­ed­ly con­tributed to lim­it­ing the space in which crim­i­nal ac­tiv­i­ty could thrive.”

He said these gains would not have been achieved if not for the con­cen­trat­ed and co­or­di­nat­ed ef­forts of the TTPS and com­mend­ed Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Al­lis­ter Gue­var­ro for his in­ten­tion­al com­mand thus far.

“Un­der its new lead­er­ship, the ser­vice has adopt­ed a firm ze­ro-tol­er­ance ap­proach and while the in­te­gra­tion of in­tel­li­gence and op­er­a­tions has not yet reached its full po­ten­tial, marked im­prove­ments are al­ready ev­i­dent,” he said.

The re­al test, Heer­ah be­lieves, will be the TTPS’s abil­i­ty to sus­tain these gains be­yond the SoE, which, he added, “will be the re­al test of law en­force­ment’s re­silience and strate­gic ca­pac­i­ty.”

Heer­ah not­ed the progress by the TTPS in mak­ing se­ri­ous in­roads against the il­le­gal nar­cotics trade.

“To tru­ly con­sol­i­date this mo­men­tum, the next de­ci­sive step must be break­ing the back of transna­tion­al or­gan­ised crime, par­tic­u­lar­ly where it in­ter­sects with cor­rup­tion and white-col­lar crim­i­nal­i­ty,” Heer­ah said.

He ex­plained that these di­men­sions of crime, which are of­ten over­looked, on­ly serve to “un­der­mine gov­er­nance, fu­el in­sta­bil­i­ty, and en­able the very gang struc­tures and il­lic­it net­works that the TTPS is cur­rent­ly push­ing back against.”

“A par­al­lel thrust against cor­rup­tion, both pub­lic and pri­vate, will send a strong mes­sage of ac­count­abil­i­ty and re­store con­fi­dence in in­sti­tu­tions,” he said.

And just like Gue­var­ro’s re­peat­ed urg­ings to po­lice of­fi­cers to pre­serve their in­tegri­ty at every junc­ture, Heer­ah echoed, “Equal­ly crit­i­cal is the in­ter­nal in­tegri­ty of the TTPS it­self. Rogue and com­pro­mised of­fi­cers at all lev­els must be de­ci­sive­ly root­ed out, as their ac­tions erode pub­lic trust and com­pro­mise op­er­a­tional ef­fec­tive­ness.

“At the same time, the over­whelm­ing ma­jor­i­ty of of­fi­cers who con­tin­ue to serve with pro­fes­sion­al­ism, sac­ri­fice, and courage de­serve stronger in­sti­tu­tion­al sup­port. De­vel­op­ing morale and en­sur­ing the wel­fare of these men and women is not on­ly a moral oblig­a­tion but a strate­gic ne­ces­si­ty in main­tain­ing law and or­der.”

He added, “The suc­cess­es achieved should not be dis­missed as tem­po­rary gains un­der the ex­tra­or­di­nary con­di­tions of an SoE. In­stead, they should serve as a foun­da­tion for a more sus­tained and holis­tic se­cu­ri­ty strat­e­gy. One that blends en­force­ment with in­tegri­ty, in­tel­li­gence with ac­count­abil­i­ty, and de­ter­rence with pub­lic trust.”

Crim­i­nol­o­gist Dr Randy Seep­er­sad was “sup­port­ive of an ex­ten­sion of the SoE.”

He com­mend­ed the TTPS for what he de­scribed as them us­ing the SoE in a “very pro­duc­tive way” with a view to elim­i­nat­ing cer­tain threats.

Adding that op­er­a­tions con­tin­ued to put a sig­nif­i­cant dent on the crim­i­nal el­e­ments, Seep­er­sad said the ex­tend­ed scope of pow­ers has al­lowed law en­force­ment to do more and this was ev­i­dent in the crime sta­tis­tics gen­er­al­ly.

“It means, there­fore, that the cit­i­zens of T&T are ac­tu­al­ly ben­e­fit­ting from the SoE. So giv­en this, the cit­i­zens would ac­tu­al­ly be sup­port­ive of the ex­ten­sion of the SoE,” he con­clud­ed.

More im­por­tant­ly, Seep­er­sad said the SoE had not placed any un­due re­stric­tions on cit­i­zens by en­forc­ing a cur­few or lim­it­ing their free­dom of move­ment - and he per­son­al­ly be­lieved, “Lives were be­ing saved.”

An­oth­er sec­ond se­cu­ri­ty ex­pert, who asked not to be named, al­so of­fered some in­sight in­to the gains achieved dur­ing the SoE, which was de­clared on Ju­ly 18.

He said, “The SoE did have some suc­cess in terms of num­bers. Some key se­ri­ous crimes dropped. This is good for the au­thor­i­ties and the pop­u­la­tion.”

He then asked, “But is the pop­u­la­tion feel­ing the ef­fects of this de­crease? Prob­a­bly no.”

At­tribut­ing this to the “fear of crime which still seems to be high,” he raised con­cerns re­gard­ing the SoE’s ef­fec­tive sus­tain­abil­i­ty for the next six months.

“What about the ef­fects on the po­lice and oth­er of­fi­cers?” he asked.

“At some time, they will burn out.”

Asked what the pos­si­ble ef­fects on the psy­che of cit­i­zens in re­la­tion to the con­tin­u­ing SoE were, the of­fi­cial said, “Things seemed to be go­ing on as usu­al. No one re­al­ly felt dis­turbed by it, on­ly prob­a­bly the In­de­pen­dence Day pa­rade. Car­ni­val in To­ba­go went ahead. Life is the same.”

He added, “The pos­i­tive side is that it gave the po­lice some ad­di­tion­al pow­ers which they can use. Over­all, I can give it a pass­ing grade based on the re­sults in terms of crime num­bers, as well as there were no in­ter­rup­tions in nor­mal lives.”

How­ev­er, he still felt that “crime will con­tin­ue to take place de­spite what is in place.”

“Em­pha­sis needs to be placed on oth­er ar­eas like pre­ven­tion and de­tec­tion,” he said.

An­oth­er se­cu­ri­ty ex­pert who al­so asked not to be named of­fered an op­pos­ing view.

He said, “I am not in sup­port of an SoE, more­so an ex­ten­sion of the SoE, as it’s the third it­er­a­tion. It now ap­pears that the SoE is a long-term crime-fight­ing tool. This can­not and should not be­come a crime re­duc­tion tool. The rel­e­vant au­thor­i­ties need to move be­yond the SoE.”

He asked, “How many more SoEs would there be? Would we be in a per­pet­u­al SoE?”

He said the Gov­ern­ment and the TTPS need­ed to come up with a prop­er na­tion­al crime fight­ing strat­e­gy that will keep the crim­i­nal el­e­ment at bay even af­ter the SoE ini­tia­tive can no longer go on.