(Trinidad Express) Prime Minister Dr Keith Rowley has said no to a state of emergency (SoE).
He remains unmoved by calls from Opposition Leader Kamla Persad-Bissessar for the declaration of an SoE as a means of confronting “overflowing criminal conduct”.
“We are not advancing a state of emergency as our response to crime,” Rowley said, as he addressed a news conference at Whitehall, Port of Spain, yesterday.
“We do not believe that a state of emergency is something that is the best option at this time because there are a number of downsides to it, not the least of which is we would want to do nothing to disrupt the economic recovery that we have been working towards and hoping to experience more going forward,” he said.
Rowley said that while everyone was exposed to the criminal element, if everyone spent all their time on this and make it the “be all and end all…or we panic ourselves into making decisions as was made in 2011 (when the last SoE was declared under the Persad-Bissessar administration), then we would be doing ourselves an injustice”, he said.
“We believe that we can fight the criminals, we are fighting the criminals and we can allow our economy to not be beaten down by the actions of the criminals by making decisions like (instituting) a state of emergency, which would not really get to the root cause of the criminality,” he said.
The Prime Minister said had the security services not been doing what they have been doing and getting some measure of success, the situation would have been “far worse”.
“We have what, 20 (murders) already for the year (it is actually 30 up to last night)…. But ask yourself, had we not been on the job pushing back at the criminal component, what would that number have been?
“So the idea of saying a state of emergency will give us this and will give us that, especially coming from people who know what they are telling us is not true because they know what they did (when they called an SoE) and they know what the outcome was,” he said, referring to the fact that in the 2011 SoE, many persons were arrested, charged and then released, and the State ended up paying millions in compensation.
No to ‘terrorists’
The Prime Minister also rejected the suggestion that Government should declare gang members as terrorists.
He said the Opposition had made a “whole hoopla” about crime talks and had their own crime talks, but cannot agree on proposals.
“Out of the (Opposition) crime talks comes (the recommendation of a) state of emergency on one hand and on the other hand, declare all criminal terrorists and wipe them out…. Now, that is not a realistic arrangement.
“But remember that proposal is coming from a former commissioner of police who is now a politician who could watch you straight in yuh face and tell you that two people who were killed in police custody died because they fall off a chair,” the Prime Minister said, referring to Andrew Morris and Joel Balcon, who were arrested in February 2021 in connection with the murder of Andrea Bharatt.
“So we have to understand what is serious governance and what is stupid talk. Understand, the Government doesn’t have the luxury of talking stupidness,” the Prime Minister said.
He said the Government did not have within its power the ability to eliminate rights in treating with criminals, even when they are in jail.
He said the Government could not engage itself in illegalities, as some advice was recommending, which was “that anybody with a gun, call them a terrorist and wipe them out, and call them a cockroach and stamp on them. But you can’t run a country like that.
“So when you get that as the high point of the crime talks, you know that there’s no distinction between crime talk and old talk on that side,” Rowley said.
On the issue of Government contracts being given to reputed gang members, the Prime Minister said he had no doubt that there were instances where people involved in organising gangs would have got themselves contracts “here and there”.
He said the criminal element was not without resourcefulness to get themselves into a position to benefit financially, citing the shaking down of contractors by the criminal element.
He said there is no Government policy to hand Government contracts to criminals.
‘Legislative attempts’
The Prime Minister said that the Attorney General very soon will indicate what “legislative attempts” the Government will make, by way of amendments or introduction of new laws, that it believes will ameliorate the crime situation as well as lead to national development.
He said the Government was trying to strengthen the Police Service (TTPS) by ensuring there are more and more people who are trustworthy in the TTPS and was therefore recruiting persons right now under a more strict and stringent arrangement.
“Rest assured that the Government and these agencies are not as, some conversations imply, just sitting there and watching the criminals run wild,” he said.
He said it was information that generated evidence.
“We’ve had an uncomfortable number of instances of hardened criminals from abroad coming into Trinidad and Tobago….We also have to bear in mind that when you apprehend people, they pass into another jurisdiction, the Judiciary, and this is where we have had some cause for disappointment, in that justice is not dispensed with the speed that the crime is dispensed with, for all kinds of reasons, he said.
He said the criminals “got the jump” on the country and seemed to be up to speed all the time while the security services were not always up to speed.
“You wonder how it is that there’s so much accuracy in their shooting. It’s because they practise. People, without being on a payroll anywhere, are armed. Guns cost money. And, of course, they use it to get more money, to terrorise the population.
“And if you aren’t in the street, they believe they can come in your house and get it because, I have no doubt in my own mind, that some of those criminals would’ve thought twice about the action that they would’ve taken had they been convinced that the consequences would’ve been real, would’ve been harsh and would be in short order. But as a Government, we are limited to what we can do,” the Prime Minister said.
He said that while the Government “moved with alacrity” to put forward a team for the bipartisan crime talks, the United National Congress (UNC) never put forward a team.
He also dismissed as “fanciful positions” talk from “some high-ranking officer in the private sector who says, ‘Go after Mr Big’. He said if there is a ‘big person’ involved in breaking the law, in crime or human trafficking, big or small, as far as I am aware, they are exposed to police action. There is no pass being given to anybody because you are Mr Big or Mr Small,” he added.
He also rubbished the “ridiculous statement” from the Opposition Leader that people using firearms and getting involved in criminality were being protected by the Government.
