Gail Alexan­der

Se­nior Po­lit­i­cal Re­porter

The cur­rent State of Emer­gency has seen a dras­tic re­duc­tion in gang-re­lat­ed homi­cides and oth­er types of vi­o­lent crime, says At­tor­ney Gen­er­al John Je­re­mie.

Je­re­mie made the point dur­ing yes­ter­day’s Par­lia­ment de­bate on the Ad­min­is­tra­tion of Jus­tice (In­dictable Pro­ceed­ings) (Amend­ment) Bill, 2025. The four-clause bill was lat­er passed with­out Op­po­si­tion sup­port and not be­fore any an­gry clash in the House be­tween Cou­va South MP Bar­ry Padarath and Laven­tille West MP Ka­reem Mar­celle.

Ear­li­er, Je­re­mie said the bill seeks to re­turn to Jus­tices of the Peace (JPs), the pow­er to is­sue search war­rants for po­lice. He said that au­thor­i­ty was re­moved in 2023.

Not­ing the bill was first pro­posed by the pre­vi­ous Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress gov­ern­ment, Je­re­mie said when the UNC re­turned to of­fice, Gov­ern­ment en­gaged with stake­hold­ers to as­sess whether the law was per­form­ing as en­vis­aged. He said it was known to be work­ing in re­duc­ing the length of time it took for mat­ters to get to tri­al, but stake­hold­ers ex­pressed frus­tra­tion in some ar­eas.

Je­re­mie said po­lice have in­di­cat­ed that one of the ways the dras­tic re­duc­tion in gang-re­lat­ed homi­cides and oth­er types of vi­o­lent crime has been achieved “is by what they de­scribe to be proac­tive polic­ing.”

“Our po­lice of­fi­cers have con­duct­ed thou­sands of ex­er­cis­es and raids through­out T&T, have de­tained a num­ber of per­sons—some on de­ten­tion or­ders and some on war­rants—and the ef­fect on the crime sta­tis­tics has been noth­ing short of re­mark­able,” Je­re­mie added.

“But the po­lice have ad­vised that the lim­it­ed avail­abil­i­ty of ju­di­cial of­fi­cers—par­tic­u­lar­ly Mas­ters and Reg­is­trars—to is­sue search war­rants when time-sen­si­tive in­ves­ti­ga­tions de­mand im­me­di­ate in­ter­ven­tion has sig­nif­i­cant­ly ham­pered polic­ing ef­forts in some cas­es,” he said.

Je­re­mie said the Gov­ern­ment, there­fore, re­vis­it­ed the pre­vi­ous amend­ment to the law in 2023 that re­moved from JPs the pow­er to grant search war­rants. The bill now seeks to re­turn the is­suance of search war­rants to mag­is­trates, mag­is­tra­cy reg­is­trars, clerks of the court, and JPs.

Je­re­mie cit­ed firearms deal­er Brent Thomas’s case, “which I took pride in bring­ing to an end.” He said the prac­tice of JPs and cer­tain po­lice of­fi­cers, “per­haps in­flu­enced by oth­er per­sons,” was crit­i­cised heav­i­ly by the judge in the Thomas mat­ter. Je­re­mie not­ed the judge’s crit­i­cisms, in­clud­ing rub­ber­stamp­ing.

Op­po­si­tion MP Kei­th Scot­land, how­ev­er, said the ra­tio­nale for the bill was ret­ro­grade. He al­so cit­ed the Thomas case, say­ing the judge was thun­der­struck that a JP could have act­ed so shab­bi­ly and is­sued war­rants in those cir­cum­stances.

In light of the ar­gu­ments, Scot­land queried why the pow­er was be­ing re­turned to JPs.

“What has changed?” he asked.

“But what we have here is a Napoleon­ic beat­ing of a re­treat. Gov­ern­ment promised us there’ll be no back­ing down against crime, yet for the In­de­pen­dence pa­rade, every­body hid. Now they’re re­treat­ing to the days of JPs us­ing war­rants for search­es of peo­ple’s homes.”

Scot­land, cit­ing the qual­i­fi­ca­tions to be­come a JP—ap­pli­ca­tion let­ter, re­cent ré­sumé, two ref­er­ences, and na­tion­al ID—ex­pressed con­cern at al­low­ing layper­sons to is­sue war­rants to send po­lice in­to peo­ple’s homes, sus­pend­ing their con­sti­tu­tion­al rights.

“Per­sons em­pow­ered with such a priv­i­lege must have at least some ju­di­cial train­ing and en­trench­ment in their em­ploy­ment so they can­not be eas­i­ly swayed. Mas­ters have a sig­nif­i­cant amount of train­ing, ex­pe­ri­ence, and track record,” he said.

“Where are the sta­tis­tics show­ing the Mas­ters to be in­suf­fi­cient or tardy in is­su­ing war­rants? Or is it that the po­lice would like eas­i­er ac­cess with­out the scruti­ny of a prop­er­ly trained ju­di­cial of­fi­cer to en­sure that war­rants—ac­cord­ing to the Thomas case—aren’t is­sued with­out over­sight?” he added, ar­gu­ing against war­rants be­ing is­sued in the dark “in a rum shop.”

Op­po­si­tion mem­bers

stage walk­out

Mean­while, de­bate on the bill de­scend­ed in­to chaos. Dur­ing Mar­celle’s con­tri­bu­tion, he ac­cused Gov­ern­ment mem­bers of po­lit­i­cal per­se­cu­tion, which led to Padarath ob­ject­ing and ris­ing to tell him to “sit down”.

This prompt­ed Mar­celle to ask him, “Who you think you talk­ing to,” which then led to a full-on shout­ing match among mem­bers from both sides.

House Speak­er Jagdeo Singh quick­ly jumped to his feet to get the House in or­der, and when his ap­peals failed, he shout­ed, “Enough, enough.”

But this did not quick­ly bring the squab­ble to an end, and the Speak­er urged mem­bers to “stop” and called for them to re­frain from name-call­ing and shout­ing.

All Op­po­si­tion MPs lat­er walked out of the sit­ting, cit­ing on­go­ing bi­ased rul­ings and prej­u­di­cial be­hav­iour by the House Speak­er.

In a state­ment af­ter­wards, the Op­po­si­tion ac­cused the Speak­er of con­sis­tent­ly re­ject­ing Ur­gent and Prime Min­is­ter’s Ques­tions, ig­nor­ing dis­or­der­ly con­duct by Gov­ern­ment MPs, and ap­ply­ing Stand­ing Or­ders un­even­ly. They said the pat­tern un­der­mines ac­count­abil­i­ty, trans­paren­cy, and the de­mo­c­ra­t­ic process.

“The Speak­er and the Gov­ern­ment must be re­mind­ed that Par­lia­ment be­longs to the peo­ple, not to any po­lit­i­cal par­ty or Pre­sid­ing Of­fi­cer,” the state­ment said.

The Op­po­si­tion, which said it rep­re­sents near­ly 400,000 cit­i­zens, reaf­firmed its com­mit­ment to de­fend­ing democ­ra­cy and hold­ing the Gov­ern­ment ac­count­able.