Sascha Wil­son

Pres­i­dent of the San Fer­nan­do Busi­ness As­so­ci­a­tion (SF­BA), Daphne Bartlett, is in full sup­port of the lim­it­ed state of emer­gency which took ef­fect from mid­night on Sun­day.She said the SF­BA had been call­ing for that course of ac­tion for years as a way of tack­ling the crime sit­u­a­tion in the coun­try. "We are in sup­port of it. We have been over the last how many years ask­ing Gov­ern­ment to in­tro­duce a lim­it­ed state of emer­gency so that they can get all the guns and am­mu­ni­tion hang­ing around in the coun­try," she said.

Bartlett said that course of ac­tion would not be detri­men­tal to the coun­try's in­ter­na­tion­al im­age. She added: "I don't think it will af­fect us to that large ex­tent. You just have to look at Lon­don where they had the may­hem tak­ing place.

"We were think­ing that the Gov­ern­ment was not in con­trol but a week lat­er the Gov­ern­ment showed us."

Bartlett said the lo­cal jus­tice sys­tem must work in tan­dem with the se­cu­ri­ty sys­tem to de­liv­er swift jus­tice.

She added: "We have to pun­ish these crim­i­nals quick­ly. Don't let the cas­es go on for five years and so on." Adding that even the av­er­age man on the streets knows where the guns were, Bartlett asked why Min­is­ter of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty John Sandy was not fo­cussing on those en­try points. She re­called that three years ago then Min­is­ter of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Mar­tin Joseph had said there were more than 100 gangs and gang lead­ers in the coun­try.

Bartlett sug­gest­ed that Sandy use that in­tel­li­gence to tack­le crime. She com­mend­ed Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice Dwayne Gibbs for some of the an­ti-crime mea­sures in­sti­tut­ed in re­cent months. Bartlett said she has seen an in­crease in po­lice pa­trols on the streets and air pa­trols by the Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty he­li­copters.

"Things are be­ing put in place but gangs re­main a big prob­lem in Trinidad. The il­lic­it drug trade is one of the ma­jor cause for the wan­ton killings," she said. Not­ing, how­ev­er, there were in­no­cent peo­ple who got caught in the may­hem, she added: "I was so hap­py to hear the Prime Min­is­ter say all cit­i­zens of T&T, not just a few, have their civic rights and it's their du­ty to en­sure that every­one en­joys them." Bartlett sug­gest­ed that the au­thor­i­ties take in­to con­sid­er­a­tion ter­tiary lev­el stu­dents who usu­al­ly com­plete class­es be­tween 8 pm and 8.30 pm.