For­mer Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter, Jack Warn­er, says it is time that Gov­ern­ment of­fi­cial­ly ac­ti­vates a State of Emer­gency (SoE), to deal with the crime cri­sis in the coun­try.

Mr Warn­er was re­act­ing to news of the most re­cent in­ci­dents of gang vi­o­lence in the cap­i­tal city, Port of Spain.

He be­lieves the au­thor­i­ties here need to take a page out of the Ja­maica play­book with tar­get­ed SoEs in hotspot ar­eas, in or­der to get a han­dle on gang vi­o­lence.

Ac­cord­ing to Mr Warn­er, the coun­try has been un­der a tac­it State of Emer­gency for the past cou­ple of years, even though the gov­ern­ment nev­er of­fi­cial­ly de­clared one.

He says at least 2,000 per­sons have been mur­dered in this coun­try, dur­ing the PNM’s term in of­fice, and cit­i­zens have cur­tailed their per­son­al and pro­fes­sion­al ac­tiv­i­ties in re­sponse to ris­ing crime. He says crime is de­stroy­ing Trinidad and To­ba­go.

“A guy from Cana­da has come to Trinidad for the Christ­mas hol­i­days, and he is stran­gled. He is dead—him and his fam­i­ly,” he points out. “Doc­tors kid­napped; one of them is dead. Yes­ter­day in Port of Spain, I saw some grue­some pic­tures of peo­ple flee­ing for their lives. How long can this con­tin­ue?”

The for­mer na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty min­is­ter is call­ing on Gov­ern­ment to act now.

“The peo­ple are liv­ing in that state and the gov­ern­ment now has to make it of­fi­cial,” Jack Warn­er states. “Deal with crime as it comes. Weed peo­ple out from com­mu­ni­ty to com­mu­ni­ty and bit by bit, you lift the emer­gency in such ar­eas that you have cov­ered. There is no oth­er way.”

Jack warn­er is call­ing for a holis­tic ap­proach to solv­ing the prob­lem of gang vi­o­lence, not­ing that the dra­con­ian leg­is­la­tion passed by the PNM over the past cou­ple of years is not the on­ly an­swer.

He be­lieves the min­istries of Sport and Ed­u­ca­tion must be in­volved in any crime fight­ing ini­tia­tives.

He al­so is con­cerned about eth­nic pro­fil­ing in­flu­enc­ing de­ci­sions made about fight­ing crime.

“I have ob­served that on­ly one eth­nic group, in the main, is in­volved in crime. Main­ly Africans seem to be in­volved in crime,” he al­leges. “Go to the courts and to Re­mand Yard and see what is hap­pen­ing. Look at all the vi­ral videos show­ing crim­i­nals at work and see what is hap­pen­ing. Why are main­ly Africans in­volved in crime?”

He adds: “Why is crime al­ways so high when the PNM is in pow­er? These are se­ri­ous is­sues to an­swer.”

Jack Warn­er says the Row­ley Ad­min­is­tra­tion needs to re­vis­it their an­ti-crime strate­gies, since the coun­try has steadi­ly record­ed an an­nu­al av­er­age of rough­ly 500 mur­ders, un­der their tenure.

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Sto­ry by JESSIE-MAY VEN­TOUR