Gail Alexan­der

Those who al­ready own pep­per spray be­fore the new law on this de­vice be­gins will have six months to seek a per­mit for it from the po­lice.

And the spray may be sold at phar­ma­cies among oth­er places ahead.

At­tor­ney Gen­er­al Faris Al-Rawi spoke about these is­sues in the Sen­ate yes­ter­day, as he pi­lot­ed an amend­ment to the Firearms Act to fa­cil­i­tate pep­per spray use.

The amend­ment pro­vides for per­mits for im­por­ta­tion, man­u­fac­tur­er and pro­duc­tion of the spray and an­oth­er per­mit for peo­ple to have it. Each per­mit costs $50. It’s for self-de­fence on­ly. Peo­ple won’t be al­lowed to trans­fer or give it to oth­ers.

The process first in­volves the sub­mis­sion of ap­pli­ca­tions to po­lice.

The ap­proved ap­pli­cant then goes to a sell­er. To sell the spray, phar­ma­cies will ap­ply to a pep­per spray deal­er and must meet se­cu­ri­ty checks.

The spray will be ad­min­is­tered to cus­tomers via pre­scrip­tion for­mats, where records of the hold­er will be kept.

Al-Rawi said Gov­ern­ment was aware peo­ple al­ready have pep­per sprays.

If peo­ple have the spray be­fore the com­ing in­to force of the new law, he said a six-month “bring in” pro­vi­sion is be­ing in­sti­tut­ed for them to ap­ply for a per­mit from the Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er.

He said he might be mind­ful to ex­tend the pe­ri­od a bit more.

Al-Rawi said T&T has some of the world’s hottest pep­pers—the Scor­pi­on pep­per—and the pro­duc­tion of the spray can cre­ate a man­u­fac­tur­ing in­dus­try.

Those pro­hib­it­ed from get­ting per­mits will be peo­ple who have been charged, as well as con­vict­ed on firearms is­sues and on bail mat­ters from bur­glar­ies to sex of­fences. The court will de­cide on per­sons in­volved in do­mes­tic vi­o­lence is­sues. Al-Rawi said do­mes­tic vi­o­lence mat­ters were “he say/she say is­sues with very dan­ger­ous con­se­quences.”

Al-Rawi al­so said the Firearms Act will be ex­pand­ed in a cou­ple of months to deal with is­sues in­clud­ing con­trol of de­liv­er­ies.

Al-Rawi said Gov­ern­ment was fight­ing the bat­tle against heavy weapons on its own, as the Op­po­si­tion did not want to sup­port this.

In­de­pen­dent Sen­a­tor An­tho­ny Vieira, how­ev­er, said he didn’t like the amend­ment, felt it was disin­gen­u­ous, con­de­scend­ing to women and dis­pro­por­tion­ate.

If it was for self-de­fence, he felt it so con­vo­lut­ed and bu­reau­crat­ic, it may be be­yond the reach of women who need it.

He said un­less women have the time, mon­ey and re­sources to deal with the bu­reau­crat­ic re­quire­ments to ac­cess, they would not get the things they des­per­ate­ly need.

Al-Rawi said the process wasn’t bu­reau­crat­ic and wasn’t like a firearm li­cence ap­pli­ca­tion.

Vieira said it was pos­si­ble to weaponise house­hold prod­ucts, from in­sec­ti­cide to gaso­line and it might be eas­i­er to get guns, cut­lass­es or knives. He said pep­per spray should be as easy to ac­quire.

He said he wasn’t “diss­ing” Gov­ern­ment’s ap­proach but there was a lack of da­ta show­ing it would be used to com­mit crimes be­yond snatch and grab sit­u­a­tions. He said its ben­e­fits out­weighed the risks.

He said the fo­cus must be the ob­jec­tive of whether the de­vice would be a sword—such as for law en­force­ment use—or a shield for women. He not­ed law en­force­ment us­es mil­i­tary strength spray.

Vieira ad­vo­cat­ed us­ing three per cent pep­per po­ten­cy, say­ing if the “slight pep­per” can suf­fice, the spray should be lib­er­alised, as he felt the bill was too cum­ber­some and dis­pro­por­tion­ate.

“If the con­sid­er­a­tion is as a weapon, you may be miss­ing the big pic­ture and may want to re­con­sid­er.”

Not­ing the spray is le­gal in 50 US states and there were no re­ports of a crime epi­dem­ic or fa­tal­i­ties, he ques­tioned why peo­ple couldn’t give it to loved ones for pro­tec­tion.

UNC sen­a­tor Jayan­ti Lutch­me­di­al ex­pressed con­cern that Par­lia­ment and of­fi­cers had to come out dur­ing the COVID pe­ri­od to deal with the pep­per spray is­sue, which the UNC re­quest­ed since 2017. She said the de­vice could be a rape de­ter­rent.

Lutch­me­di­al said the ac­qui­si­tion process will be pun­ish­ment for peo­ple and per­mit ap­proval would add to the CoP’s work­load.

Il­le­gal im­por­ta­tion of the spray must al­so be con­sid­ered. She slammed the Gov­ern­ment’s crit­i­cism of the Op­po­si­tion, say­ing noth­ing was done to se­cure the south­west­ern penin­su­la.