Gail Alexan­der

A UNC gov­ern­ment will cre­ate a home in­va­sion of­fence in law with a 25-year jail penal­ty and al­so of­fer a “stand your ground” le­gal prin­ci­ple al­low­ing cit­i­zens to use dead­ly force to de­fend their home against in­trud­ers, Op­po­si­tion Leader Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar says.

Per­sad-Bisses­sar re­vealed the pro­pos­als at the UNC’s Mon­day Night Re­port at the Cou­va South Hall, de­tail­ing more than 15-plus se­cu­ri­ty and jus­tice plans, in­clud­ing fill­ing all va­can­cies in the Of­fice of the Di­rec­tor of Pub­lic Pros­e­cu­tions.

Slam­ming the Dr Kei­th Row­ley ad­min­is­tra­tion’s han­dling of T&T’s crime cri­sis, Per­sad-Bisses­sar said while the UNC wel­comed “our Cari­com neigh­bours and hope they can come up with some­thing ac­tion­able,” the two-day Crime Sym­po­sium was a pro­pa­gan­da event to di­vert re­spon­si­bil­i­ty from Gov­ern­ment’s in­ep­ti­tude.

“Row­ley was busy fight­ing crime the way he knows best—talk, talk, talk! Imag­ine this man came to talk about the cost of surg­eries for gun­shot wounds and de­fend (Fitzger­ald) Hinds. Af­ter an en­tire day at the sym­po­sium, not one plan!

“I thought he would talk about home in­va­sions but he didn’t. We’ve tak­en painful note of the ap­palling in­ci­dence of what is well known as home in­va­sion. This is oc­cur­ring with mo­not­o­nous fre­quen­cy un­der the noses of law en­force­ment. The PNM and Kei­th Row­ley is im­po­tent and obliv­i­ous to this heinous crime,” she said.

She claimed that dur­ing the PNM’s term, more than 15,000 rob­beries and at­tacks in homes had oc­curred.

“Imag­ine, as we’ve seen shock­ing­ly on CCTV cam­eras, as much as sev­en men jump over your wall and in­vade the sanc­ti­ty of your home with guns, cut­lass­es and oth­er weapons. They tor­ture, rob, rape and then like rats, jump off your house in rapid suc­ces­sion to pro­ceed to a wait­ing car," she said.

“This can psy­cho­log­i­cal­ly dev­as­tate peo­ple. The cries, the pain, the an­guish, the anger that fol­lows, you don’t wish for your worst en­e­mies.”

She added: “While Row­ley spends two days talk­ing fool­ish­ness at the Hy­att with­out a plan, the UNC will do the fol­low­ing to put an end to this dev­il­ish of­fence: I pro­pose that my next UNC gov­ern­ment will cre­ate a full crim­i­nal of­fence of home in­va­sion.

“This will in­volve in­creas­ing the sen­tences for lar­ce­ny, bur­glary, se­ri­ous as­sault, un­law­ful en­try to a res­i­dence us­ing force, us­ing a firearm or oth­er weapon with men­ace in a home or dwelling place. The new penal­ty for home in­va­sion and with as­so­ci­at­ed of­fences will be 25 years in jail. This no­tion of dwelling home is al­ready found in the Tres­pass Amend­ment Act. We’ll use that for the cre­ation of the home in­va­sion of­fences.”

She added: “I al­so pro­pose we adopt the stand your ground le­gal prin­ci­ple that will be in­sert­ed in­to law. Our pro­pos­al means putting in­to our laws the le­gal prin­ci­ple that al­lows a per­son to use force in self-de­fence with­out re­treat­ing. Right now, you can on­ly use rea­son­able force but this prin­ci­ple, al­so cas­tle doc­trine, states in­di­vid­u­als have the right to use force, in­clud­ing dead­ly force, to pro­tect them­selves against an in­trud­er in their homes.

“The law will pro­tect home­own­ers, busi­ness­peo­ple and oc­cu­piers when they use force, in­clud­ing dead­ly force, against any in­trud­er who un­law­ful­ly and forcibly en­ters their res­i­dence.”

Per­sad-Bisses­sar said T&T, un­der the a UNC gov­ern­ment, will al­so join over 28 US states that have his “Make My Day” law.

"You'll not have to be afraid to use dead­ly force on your own prop­er­ty to pro­tect your­self or fam­i­ly any­more," she said.

"So when Row­ley talk­ing for two days about vi­o­lence as a health is­sue, we pro­pose pol­i­cy and fun­da­men­tal and bold le­gal change to con­front the bar­bar­ians at our gates."

A UNC Gov­ern­ment will:

Make le­gal firearms more ac­ces­si­ble to qual­i­fied de­serv­ing law-abid­ing peo­ple

In­tro­duce tablets and dash­board cam­eras in po­lice ve­hi­cles and body cam­eras on all of­fi­cers on du­ty.

Re­source wit­ness pro­tec­tion pro­grammes and mod­ernise the Jus­tice Pro­tec­tion Act.

Build ju­di­cial com­plex­es for speedy court mat­ters.

Full im­ple­men­ta­tion of Elec­tron­ic Mon­i­tor­ing bracelets.

Re­place the out­dat­ed Do­mes­tic Vi­o­lence Act.

Es­tab­lish a Na­tion­al Op­er­a­tion Cen­tre as orig­i­nal­ly de­signed.

Re-es­tab­lish the Jus­tice Min­istry

Quar­ter­ly TTPS al­lo­ca­tions.

A crim­i­nal re­view com­mis­sion to re­view the record of crim­i­nal of­fend­ers.

Rein­tro­duce Com­mu­ni­ty Com­fort Pa­trols

Lat­er re­tire­ment age for De­fence Force mem­bers

Use part of the UWI Debe Cam­pus for train­ing pro­tec­tive ser­vices.

New dual-pur­pose train­ing fa­cil­i­ty for foren­sic sci­ences.