Au­gust 21, 2011 9 pm:Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar has an­nounced a lim­it­ed state of emer­gency and cur­few in 'hotspots' in Trinidad and To­ba­go to deal with es­ca­lat­ing crime. The mea­sure takes ef­fect at mid­night. De­tails of the 'hotspots' and times of the cur­few will be dis­closed on Mon­day by the Min­is­ter of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty, Brigadier John Sandy.

Speak­ing at a press con­fer­ence just be­fore 8 pm on Sun­day at her pri­vate res­i­dence in Phillip­ines, the Prime Min­is­ter said "af­ter much de­lib­er­a­tion it has been agreed that Gov­ern­ment will im­pose a lim­it­ed state of emer­gency in hot spots across the coun­try".Even though the list of ar­eas af­fect­ed by this new lim­it­ed state of emer­gency has not been re­leased the Prime Min­is­ter said in­for­ma­tion on cur­fews and bul­letins on these ar­eas will be re­leased on Mon­day.

The PM's state­ment:

The en­tire na­tion has been rocked with the re­cent trag­ic news of the spate of mur­der­sover the past few days. The sit­u­a­tion has reached pro­por­tions which the gov­ern­ment­must re­spond to in the most de­fin­i­tive man­ner pos­si­ble.I am ad­vised that one of the cau­sa­tions for the spike in mur­ders is iron­i­cal­ly linked­to the suc­cess by the po­lice in the dis­cov­ery of large drug hauls with val­ues in ex­cess oftwen­ty mil­lion dol­lars in just one raid.These large sums of mon­ey sim­ply do not dis­ap­pear from the drug trade with­out con­se­quences and in some of the cas­es now oc­cur­ring, this is the re­sult .The ques­tion though isn't just what is caus­ing it but how do we deal with it?

As you know, we have de­ployed more fi­nan­cial and hu­man re­sources than any gov­ern­ment in re­cent time in deal­ing with the scourge of crime and un­til this re­cent up­surge the na­tion had been en­cour­aged by the de­cline shown by year to years sta­tis­tics. But a prob­lem of this na­ture that has been the re­sult of years of ne­glect will not dis­ap­pear overnight and we re­assess day by day each strat­e­gy de­ployed and how ef­fec­tive it is in achiev­ing short term and long term ob­jec­tives in re­duc­ing crime. But the cur­rent crime spree dic­tates that more must be done and stronger ac­tion has to be em­ployed now.

The sit­u­a­tion can­not con­tin­ue like this with­out a re­sponse com­men­su­rate with the wan­ton act­sof vi­o­lence and law­less­ness; it must be a re­sponse as well that will halt the cur­rent spike in gan­gac­tiv­i­ty and crime in gen­er­al in the short­est pos­si­ble time. Af­ter much de­lib­er­a­tion with the Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Coun­cil and mem­bers of the Cab­i­net it has been agreed that the gov­ern­ment con­sid­er the im­po­si­tion of a lim­it­ed state of emer­gen­cyin hot spots across the coun­try.

Such a con­sid­er­a­tion must of course have the agree­ment of theP­res­i­dent of the Re­pub­lic of Trinidad and To­ba­go, His Ex­cel­len­cy, George Maxwell­Richards and I will be meet­ing with him to dis­cuss this mat­ter. The lim­it­ed state of emer­gency will al­low us to achieve a num­ber of things in re­la­tion tocrime re­duc­tion which would not be pru­dent for me to dis­close in ad­vance of the ac­tion­tak­en. We are aware that such a de­ci­sion will have an im­pact on the dai­ly lives of in­no­cent,law abid­ing cit­i­zens in these ar­eas but I feel con­fi­dent that they will recog­nise and ap­pre­ci­atethe need to pro­tect them and bring the cur­rent crime surge af­fect­ing them un­der con­trol.

We have the will to tack­le the crime prob­lem in Trinidad and To­ba­go and the com­mit­ment­to place every re­source at our dis­pos­al to­wards wag­ing and win­ning this war on crime.We will suc­ceed. The na­tion will not be held to ran­som by ma­raud­ing groups of thugs ben­ton cre­at­ing hav­oc on our so­ci­ety. The lim­it­ed state of emer­gency in hot spots across Trinidadand To­ba­go is mere­ly part of a larg­er ag­gres­sive re­ac­tion re­sponse by the gov­ern­ment.As these mea­sures are be­ing de­ployed us­ing both out po­lice and mil­i­tary we ask all cit­i­zen­sto bear with the in­con­ve­niences that may arise from time to time. This is in every­one's in­ter­est.

In fact, I in­tend to hold dis­cus­sions with the Leader of the Op­po­si­tion to seek his par­ty's sup­port­with cer­tain leg­isla­tive mat­ters in Par­lia­ment. Trinidad and To­ba­go comes first. Noth­ing is more im­por­tant than the right of each cit­i­zen to be pro­tect­ed and to en­joy a life of peace and tran­quil­i­ty.