Res­i­dents of sev­er­al com­mu­ni­ties con­sid­ered “high-crime” ar­eas have ex­pressed mixed views on whether the lat­est State of Emer­gency (SoE) will pro­duce any mean­ing­ful re­sults.

The Trinidad and To­ba­go Po­lice Ser­vice car­ried out 95 op­er­a­tions on the first day of the State of Emer­gency (SoE), which be­gan on Tues­day, re­sult­ing in 18 ar­rests and the seizure of three firearms.

Of­fi­cers from a spe­cialised unit of the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice yes­ter­day shot and killed a man who was out on bail for mur­der.

Op­po­si­tion Leader Pen­ne­lope Beck­les says the Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM) will host a pub­lic meet­ing in Tu­na­puna to­mor­row to ed­u­cate cit­i­zens about how their con­sti­tu­tion­al rights will be af­fect­ed un­der the new­ly de­clared State of Emer­gency (SoE).

Pa­tri­ot­ic Front leader Mick­ela Pan­day is warn­ing that Trinidad and To­ba­go risks weak­en­ing con­sti­tu­tion­al pro­tec­tions if emer­gency pow­ers are re­peat­ed­ly used as the pri­ma­ry re­sponse to crime.

Trinidad and To­ba­go’s trade union move­ment is clos­ing ranks on the Gov­ern­ment’s lat­est de­c­la­ra­tion of a State of Emer­gency (SoE), warn­ing that while crime must be con­front­ed de­ci­sive­ly, emer­gency pow­ers can­not sub­sti­tute for a co­her­ent na­tion­al crime strat­e­gy nor be al­lowed to erode work­ers’ con­sti­tu­tion­al rights.

WASH­ING­TON—Trinidad and To­ba­go Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar is among 12 world lead­ers con­firmed to at­tend Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump’s Shield of the Amer­i­c­as Sum­mit in the city of Do­ral over the week­end, the White House con­firmed yes­ter­day.

Trinidad and Toba­go na­tion­als liv­ing in the Unit­ed Arab Emi­rates (UAE) ad­mit­ted yes­ter­day that apart from the widen­ing Gulf con­flict in­volv­ing the Unit­ed States, Is­rael and Iran, they were al­so be­ing trau­ma­tised by in­sen­si­tive com­ments be­ing made by in­di­vid­u­als on so­cial me­dia.

Trinidad and To­ba­go na­tion­als who left the coun­try to fight for the Is­lam­ic State of Iraq and Syr­ia (ISIS) are re­port­ed­ly at­tempt­ing to re­turn home amid es­ca­lat­ing vi­o­lence in war-torn Syr­ia and Iraq, rais­ing ur­gent le­gal, se­cu­ri­ty and hu­man­i­tar­i­an con­cerns, ac­cord­ing to at­tor­ney CJ Williams and rel­a­tives of those de­tained.

Venezue­lan mi­grants in To­ba­go have praised the on­go­ing na­tion­al reg­is­tra­tion frame­work, de­scrib­ing the process as fast and ef­fi­cient and ex­press­ing sat­is­fac­tion with how they were treat­ed by of­fi­cials.

Cus­toms and Ex­cise is grap­pling with a ma­jor val­u­a­tion prob­lem, Cus­toms Comp­trol­ler Ri­ad Ju­man re­vealed yes­ter­day while de­fend­ing his of­fi­cers’ con­duct in as­sess­ing im­port­ed prod­ucts.

An Ed­in­burgh 500 fam­i­ly has in­curred hun­dreds of thou­sands of dol­lars in loss­es af­ter a fire de­stroyed two ve­hi­cles and par­tial­ly dam­aged their home on Tues­day evening.