Gail Alexan­der

Se­nior Po­lit­i­cal Re­porter

Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Roger Alexan­der has promised that sev­er­al new an­ti-crime ini­tia­tives will be rolled out in the com­ing weeks—and cit­i­zens will soon be­gin to see re­sults.

Alexan­der made the com­mit­ment on Tues­day evening dur­ing the Gov­ern­ment’s pub­lic con­sul­ta­tion on the pro­posed stand-your-ground (SYG) leg­is­la­tion, at the Oropouche East Sec­ondary School.

Oropouche East MP Dr Roodal Mooni­lal, in his ad­dress, pre­sent­ed a No­vem­ber 2024 Free­dom of In­for­ma­tion re­sponse from the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice (TTPS), which stat­ed that 500 home in­va­sions were re­port­ed for that year.

“That’s more than one a day,” Mooni­lal said, as he crit­i­cised the Gov­ern­ment’s han­dling of crime.

In re­sponse, Alexan­der said Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice Al­lis­ter Gue­var­ro had giv­en a sin­cere com­mit­ment to restor­ing a lev­el of safe­ty and se­cu­ri­ty “not seen be­fore.” How­ev­er, he ac­knowl­edged the chal­lenges of man­ag­ing un­der-re­sourced arms of na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty.

“It’s dif­fi­cult for me as Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter be­cause the TTPS, the Prison Ser­vice, and Fire Ser­vice have all been un­der-re­sourced. These things were left be­hind for years, and now I have to fix it, when I should be con­cen­trat­ing sole­ly on crime,” he said.

Still, Alexan­der in­sist­ed that progress was be­ing made.

“With­in the next cou­ple weeks, you’ll see a num­ber of ini­tia­tives com­ing for­ward. Every­body ask­ing for a crime plan—don’t talk ‘crime plan’ with me. You’ll see the re­sults,” he said.

At­ten­dees at the con­sul­ta­tion raised sev­er­al ques­tions about the le­gal im­pli­ca­tions of killing in­trud­ers—whether in pri­vate homes, gat­ed com­mu­ni­ties, or sim­i­lar sce­nar­ios.

Min­is­ter Alexan­der clar­i­fied that the pro­posed Stand-Your-Ground law was not a “li­cense to kill,” nor a means of arm­ing the pop­u­la­tion in­dis­crim­i­nate­ly.

“This is not a killing field law. This is about pro­tect­ing your home, your prop­er­ty—not en­cour­ag­ing vi­o­lence,” he said.

Re­gard­ing Firearm Users Li­cences (FULs), Alexan­der re­vealed that the Firearms Ap­peals Board was re­cent­ly es­tab­lished to ad­dress griev­ances against the TTPS’ firearm is­suance de­ci­sions.

“If peo­ple feel they were wronged by the Com­mis­sion­er, they now have an av­enue for ap­peal,” he said. But he cau­tioned strong­ly against ap­ply­ing for FULs un­der cer­tain con­di­tions.

“If you know you’re in­volved in a do­mes­tic sit­u­a­tion, I sug­gest, I ask, I beg you, stay away from firearm ap­pli­ca­tions. If you have is­sues, whether drug-re­lat­ed or oth­er­wise, stay away from firearm ap­pli­ca­tions,” Alexan­der urged.

Alexan­der re­mind­ed the au­di­ence that the stand-your-ground bill is still un­der con­sul­ta­tion and has not yet be­come law.

“The Prime Min­is­ter gave back peo­ple their ‘cas­tle’, but do not be­gin to act as though this has al­ready passed. This isn’t about killing—it’s about de­fend­ing your­self and your prop­er­ty,” he said.

Na­tion­al Gas Com­pa­ny (NGC) chair­man Ger­ald Ramdeen, al­so weighed in, not­ing that the SYG bill does not give cit­i­zens the right to “draw” their weapons with­out con­se­quence.

“It is not a li­cence to kill,” he said, re­spond­ing to re­peat­ed ques­tions from the pub­lic about when one would be al­lowed to shoot.

Leader of Gov­ern­ment Busi­ness in the Sen­ate, Dar­rell Al­la­har, said the bill will re­quire a two-thirds ma­jor­i­ty in both the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives and the Sen­ate.

“That’s why we’ve come to you,” he said, urg­ing the pub­lic to sup­port the leg­is­la­tion.

He em­pha­sised, “It’s not ‘an eye for an eye’. It doesn’t open the flood­gates for you to kill any­one who walks in­to your yard—not the la­dy sell­ing mag­a­zines or the man sell­ing man­goes. We all have an in­stinct to pro­tect our fam­i­lies and homes, but we must al­so con­tain our rage, or we’ll be no bet­ter than the ban­dits.”

Le­gal safe­guards

At­tor­ney Ganesh Sa­roop, who was al­so present, out­lined key le­gal re­stric­tions in the draft SYG leg­is­la­tion. He stressed that:

The bill does not al­low pre-emp­tive or vig­i­lante-style jus­tice.

It does not ap­ply if the per­son tar­get­ed has a le­gal right to be in the home.

It is void if ex­ces­sive or dis­pro­por­tion­ate force is used.

It does not ap­ply if the home is be­ing used for il­le­gal ac­tiv­i­ty or if po­lice are en­ter­ing law­ful­ly.

Al­la­har added that the Gov­ern­ment will con­sid­er ex­tend­ing the bill’s pro­tec­tions to sce­nar­ios in­volv­ing gat­ed com­mu­ni­ties, shared com­pounds, and in­ci­dents oc­cur­ring on roads just out­side a home.