The At­tor­ney Gen­er­al and the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice (TTPS) are be­ing asked to re­con­sid­er the re­quire­ments to ap­ply on­line for a pep­per spray per­mit.

The process is be­ing de­scribed by a women’s rights non-gov­ern­men­tal or­gan­i­sa­tion (NGO) and even the Op­po­si­tion Leader as cum­ber­some, over­ly strin­gent and one that au­to­mat­i­cal­ly dis­qual­i­fies a vul­ner­a­ble seg­ment of the pop­u­la­tion.

The on­line pep­per spray ap­pli­ca­tion form can be found on the TTPS’ of­fi­cial web­site. Un­der the ‘per­son­al in­for­ma­tion’ sec­tion which is the first page of the process, it re­quires that a bank state­ment or util­i­ty bill be elec­tron­i­cal­ly up­loaded to pro­vide proof of ad­dress. Fail­ure to up­load ei­ther of these pro­hibits the ap­pli­cant from pro­gress­ing fur­ther.

Guardian Me­dia pro­ceed­ed with the process and soon we were asked for two forms of na­tion­al iden­ti­fi­ca­tion where it was spec­i­fied that it can be “any com­bi­na­tion of your Iden­ti­fi­ca­tion Card, Dri­ver’s Per­mit and/or pass­port in­for­ma­tion”. A valid rental agree­ment con­tract is al­so be­ing ac­cept­ed.

The ap­pli­ca­tion form al­so asks for em­ploy­ee and em­ploy­er de­tails.

How­ev­er, the In­ter­na­tion­al Women’s Re­source Net­work (IWRN) be­lieves the process acts as a de­ter­rent and is dis­crim­i­na­to­ry.

“While we un­der­stand that cau­tion is crit­i­cal, we must be cog­nisant of the fact that sev­er­al women who may need the li­cense are sin­gle work­ing moth­ers, women who may be vic­tims of do­mes­tic vi­o­lence as well as women who may not be tech-savvy. If we are se­ri­ous as a coun­try about pro­tect­ing our women, then we are call­ing on the of­fice of the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al and by ex­ten­sion the TTPS to ur­gent­ly re­vise the ap­pli­ca­tion process to make it more user-friend­ly for ap­pli­cants to not be de­terred.”

Mean­while, Op­po­si­tion Leader Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar is call­ing on ap­pli­cants to not di­vulge their bank­ing in­for­ma­tion. She too be­lieves changes are need­ed to the ex­ist­ing sys­tem.

“A valid ID card and a cer­tifi­cate of good char­ac­ter should be enough for a pep­per spray per­mit. It’s a non-lethal tool for self-de­fence,” Per­sad-Bisses­sar said via text mes­sages.

She added that the need for even a util­i­ty bill is un­nec­es­sary and, in some cas­es, im­prac­ti­cal.

“In a lot of homes, the util­i­ty bills are in the hus­band’s name so he will have to pro­vide a let­ter to sup­port the use of the bill. If there is an abu­sive hus­band present, he will not do so to as­sist the wife.”

Metic­u­lous reg­is­tra­tion process will be more fea­si­ble–Heer­ah

How­ev­er, re­gion­al se­cu­ri­ty ex­pert Garvin Heer­ah of­fered a dif­fer­ent per­spec­tive.

“Al­though some of the checks and bal­ances do ap­pear rig­or­ous and elim­i­na­to­ry in na­ture, we must be aware that at the end of the day, this is a weapon. The clause about bank state­ments etc may be stretch­ing it, but I strong­ly be­lieve that prop­er ac­count­abil­i­ty and a metic­u­lous reg­is­tra­tion process would be more fea­si­ble.”

Heer­ah said the process must not en­cour­age abuse as there will be peo­ple seek­ing to ac­quire the spray for ne­far­i­ous pur­pos­es.

Guardian Me­dia sent sev­er­al ques­tions to the TTPS and At­tor­ney Gen­er­al Regi­nald Ar­mour ask­ing if the pro­ce­dure will be re­vis­it­ed how­ev­er there was no im­me­di­ate re­sponse.

Ques­tions sent to the TTPS in­clud­ed how many peo­ple have ap­plied for the per­mit to date, and if any were is­sued.

In April, Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Fitzger­ald Hinds re­vealed in Par­lia­ment that 42 peo­ple have ap­plied via the TTPS web­site for keep-and-car­ry per­mits for pep­per spray.

At the time he said nine im­port per­mits were grant­ed with two im­porters al­ready await­ing clear­ance by the Bu­reau of Stan­dards for their stock of pep­per spray can­is­ters.

In 2021, the Firearms (Amend­ment) Act No 7 of 2021 was passed in Par­lia­ment to reg­u­late the use of pep­per spray in this coun­try. This came af­ter an ad­vi­so­ry com­mit­tee was ap­point­ed to look at its op­er­a­tional­i­sa­tion and to de­ter­mine the strength and type of pep­per spray which will be per­mit­ted.