The pres­i­dent of the In­ter-Re­li­gious Or­ga­ni­za­tion (IRO), Dr El­lis Bur­ris, has ex­pressed full sup­port for the Gov­ern­ment’s re­cent mea­sures to tack­le crime, in­clud­ing the de­c­la­ra­tion of a State of Emer­gency.

Re­spond­ing to ques­tions from Guardian Me­dia this week, Bur­ris em­pha­sised the ur­gent need for ac­tion to curb ris­ing crim­i­nal ac­tiv­i­ty and re­store a sense of se­cu­ri­ty among cit­i­zens.

The IRO head not­ed that this is not the first time such a mea­sure has been im­ple­ment­ed in Trinidad and To­ba­go.

He point­ed to a pre­vi­ous state of emer­gency un­der the for­mer Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM) ad­min­is­tra­tion, say­ing it had pro­duced mea­sur­able re­sults.

“You do not wait for things to get to an ex­treme con­di­tion be­fore you start nip­ping it in the bud. I think this Gov­ern­ment is mov­ing along a path to pre­vent an es­ca­la­tion, and there­fore it is try­ing to nip things in the bud be­fore it gets out of hand.”

Bur­ris ac­knowl­edged that the SoE is nec­es­sary to pro­vide an im­me­di­ate re­sponse to the po­ten­tial threats.

“The IRO ap­pre­ci­ates the move to en­sure the coun­try does not have a rise in the crime sit­u­a­tion on its hands and that we are al­so en­cour­ag­ing our par­tic­i­pants in the group of IRO to in­crease their prayers.”

Crim­i­nol­o­gist Dr Randy Seep­er­sad has praised the Gov­ern­ment’s lat­est an­ti-crime strat­e­gy as a step in the right di­rec­tion, but cau­tioned that last­ing re­sults will de­pend on ad­dress­ing the root caus­es of crim­i­nal be­hav­iour.

On Mon­day, Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar laid out a de­tailed an­ti-crime strat­e­gy cen­tred on in­sti­tu­tion­al re­form, en­hanced po­lice ca­pa­bil­i­ties, and in­tel­li­gence-dri­ven op­er­a­tions, while de­clar­ing that State-fund­ed pro­grammes like the Com­mu­ni­ty-Based En­vi­ron­men­tal Pro­tec­tion and En­hance­ment Pro­gramme (CEPEP) and the Un­em­ploy­ment Re­lief Pro­gramme (URP) must no longer be used to bankroll crim­i­nal gangs.

Re­spond­ing to the Gov­ern­ment’s roll-out of its com­pre­hen­sive crime-fight­ing ini­tia­tives, in­clud­ing changes to the struc­ture and lead­er­ship of the Na­tion­al Op­er­a­tions Cen­tre (NOC),  Seep­er­sad de­scribed the plan as “well-rea­soned” and “ac­tion-ori­ent­ed,” par­tic­u­lar­ly the move to place the NOC un­der the com­mand of the Trinidad and To­ba­go Po­lice Ser­vice (TTPS).

“The new Gov­ern­ment is tak­ing some very con­crete steps in the right di­rec­tion,” Seep­er­sad said.

Seep­er­sad fur­ther not­ed, “The var­i­ous ini­tia­tives seem to be well-rea­soned. Def­i­nite­ly, the NOC should be an ac­tion cen­tre. This is not to say it may not have been able to func­tion as such un­der the com­mand of the SSA, but per­haps the Prime Min­is­ter sees it more fit to change the com­mand to the TTPS to make it more ac­tion-ori­ent­ed. That is rea­son­able, giv­en that the TTPS has the re­sources to ac­tu­al­ly reach out on the ground and fol­low up on in­tel­li­gence right away.”

He al­so en­cour­aged col­lab­o­ra­tion be­tween the TTPS and the Strate­gic Ser­vices Agency (SSA), say­ing the SSA’s ex­pe­ri­ence and in­tel­li­gence ca­pa­bil­i­ties should be lever­aged dur­ing the tran­si­tion.

How­ev­er, the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies lec­tur­er not­ed a crit­i­cal gap in the Gov­ern­ment’s cur­rent strat­e­gy, a lack of em­pha­sis on ad­dress­ing the un­der­ly­ing so­cial dri­vers of crime.

“What I don’t re­al­ly see here, and I am com­par­ing what was in the UNC’s man­i­festo, and one of the core ar­eas in the man­i­festo had to do with fix­ing the root caus­es of crime,” Seep­er­sad said.

Pres­i­dent of the Roots Foun­da­tion, Mti­ma Sol­wazi, told Guardian Me­dia that it was im­por­tant for the au­thor­i­ties to en­gage with com­mu­ni­ties and bridge grow­ing dis­con­nects.

“Dr Er­ic Williams had this vi­sion of the pri­vate sec­tor, pub­lic sec­tor and peo­ple sec­tor, and once you have that co­he­sion among the pri­vate sec­tor, pub­lic sec­tor and peo­ple sec­tor, the com­mu­ni­ty, you will not need an SoE, we will have the ul­ti­mate crime plan be­cause we are work­ing with peo­ple on the ground.”

Mean­while, Greater San Fer­nan­do Area Cham­ber of Com­merce pres­i­dent, Ki­ran Singh, said the Prime Min­is­ter’s pro­posed an­ti-crime plans came as wel­come news for mem­bers of the busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty. 

“The plac­ing of the NOC un­der the di­rect su­per­vi­sion of the TTPS may as­sist in this re­gard, giv­en the fact that it seemed it was in­ef­fec­tive from a polic­ing point of view for sev­er­al years. It is im­por­tant that there is one com­mon force to deal with the crime wave that con­tin­ues to plague us for the last sev­er­al years, and the es­ca­lat­ing home in­va­sions and kid­nap­pings con­tin­ue even though we are un­der an SoE means the youth crim­i­nals don’t have any re­spect or re­gard for the law.”