Sascha Wil­son

Se­nior Re­porter

sascha.wil­son@guardian.co.tt

Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar has re­vealed that she has a pan­ic but­ton in­stalled in her pri­vate home in Philip­pine, San Fer­nan­do, and is en­cour­ag­ing oth­er home­own­ers to con­sid­er do­ing the same to pro­tect them­selves from the crim­i­nal el­e­ment.

Speak­ing dur­ing a pub­lic con­sul­ta­tion on the pro­posed stand-your-ground leg­is­la­tion at her con­stituen­cy of­fice in Pe­nal on Tues­day night, Per­sad-Bisses­sar, the Siparia MP, said the de­vice was an in­ex­pen­sive but ef­fec­tive tool for per­son­al safe­ty.

“Dr Bisses­sar did some­thing home, which is to put a pan­ic but­ton,” said Per­sad-Bisses­sar.

The Prime Min­is­ter ad­vised that home­own­ers could ben­e­fit from this mea­sure as an added lay­er of se­cu­ri­ty.

“If you don’t have CCTV cam­eras. You don’t have any­thing. Any­time you are wor­ried, you just press that but­ton and the whole place is noise, like a siren blar­ing.

We did that at our home, so I am say­ing it is not so ex­pen­sive to do, so maybe you can con­sid­er that un­til we get the crim­i­nals safe­ly locked away and be­hind bars.”

The con­sul­ta­tions on the stand-your-ground law have been dom­i­nat­ed by se­cu­ri­ty con­cerns from cit­i­zens, with the is­sues sur­round­ing home in­va­sions of­ten be­ing high­light­ed.

Per­sad-Bisses­sar as­sured that the State of the Emer­gency (SoE) is work­ing, but not­ed that root­ing out crime “does take time,” and adding that “we shall per­se­vere.”

She al­so point­ed out that 800 Spe­cial Re­serve Po­lice of­fi­cers have been ab­sorbed in­to the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice and aux­il­iary of­fi­cers were al­so ab­sorbed in­to the Trinidad and To­ba­go Fire Ser­vice.

The Prime Min­is­ter’s com­ments came as sev­er­al res­i­dents at the con­sul­ta­tion shared per­son­al sto­ries of crime and the steps they have tak­en to pro­tect them­selves.

One woman, who re­quest­ed anonymi­ty, said her fam­i­ly mem­bers had been vic­tims of crime span­ning 40 years. She re­called that her grand­par­ents were bru­tal­ly at­tacked dur­ing a home in­va­sion in 2014 and both sub­se­quent­ly died. Sup­port­ing the leg­is­la­tion, she said there is noth­ing greater than be­ing able to pro­tect them­selves and their fam­i­lies.

An­oth­er vic­tim, who al­so re­quest­ed anonymi­ty, re­count­ed that his wife and daugh­ter were al­most raped af­ter four ban­dits stormed their home. He ex­pressed dis­ap­point­ment that the per­pe­tra­tors were on­ly sen­tenced to two years in prison and urged res­i­dents to in­stall a bunker or safe­ty room in their homes.

Pe­nal res­i­dent Narase Sama­roo wel­comed the leg­is­la­tion, say­ing it would give cit­i­zens the right to “whoop” as­sailants who break in­to their homes.

“When that bill be­comes law, that leg­is­la­tion is go­ing to be a valu­able tool for vic­tims of home in­va­sion, when we whoop those in­vaders who come in­to our home. We wouldn’t have to an­swer. We will be in­no­cent vic­tims, rather than how the law has it present­ly.”

He said he and his wife have in­vest­ed heav­i­ly in se­cu­ri­ty mea­sures, in­clud­ing CCTV cam­eras, alarm sys­tems, night se­cu­ri­ty lights, and even a Rot­tweil­er.

Sama­roo al­so de­scribed an in­ci­dent in which his cousin, a li­censed firearm hold­er, hes­i­tat­ed to de­fend her­self dur­ing a break-in be­cause she feared the law would not pro­tect her ac­tions.

The Prime Min­is­ter en­cour­aged mem­bers of the pub­lic to read the pro­posed leg­is­la­tion from the web­site of the Of­fice of the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al and sub­mit their com­ments and sug­ges­tions.

Low-cost se­cu­ri­ty op­tion

Guardian Me­dia was told that the cost of a pan­ic but­ton can range from un­der $1,000 to more than $1,500.

At TSZ Re­tail Store Ltd in St James, a pan­ic alarm kit is avail­able at $1,548.

Jeneia Lu­cas, the re­tail ser­vices su­per­vi­sor, said, “You will have two door con­tacts, mean­ing if some­one en­ters with­out your knowl­edge, you get an alert on your phone via an app, which you have to down­load. The pan­ic but­ton sends an alarm to phone num­bers pro­vid­ed by you.”

Si­mon Pe­ters, own­er of Si­mon’s M&C Ser­vices, which is avail­able on­line, in­stalls a pan­ic but­ton siren alarm.

“It’s re­al­ly loud, yes, neigh­bours will hear.”

Ex­plain­ing that it is sim­ple to in­stall, he said, “I in­stall that alarm in res­i­den­tial and com­mer­cial places.”

The sys­tem, which costs $950, can al­so be ac­ti­vat­ed through mo­bile phones.

Guardian Me­dia un­der­stands that oth­er pan­ic but­ton sys­tems can al­so be con­nect­ed to se­cu­ri­ty firms who would re­spond and con­tact the po­lice once the alarm is trig­gered.