Rad­hi­ca Sookraj

Hours af­ter Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar de­clared a lim­it­ed state of emer­gency on Sun­day, po­lice set up drag­nets in sev­er­al ar­eas on the bound­aries of San Fer­nan­do and caught many cit­i­zens un­aware. At Her­mitage, a po­lice he­li­copter caused a stir when it land­ed near the Prime Min­is­ter's res­i­dence at Phillip­ine and a team of law­men dis­em­barked. At Carl­ton Lane, a known crime hotspot in San Fer­nan­do, law­men were seen speak­ing to res­i­dents and ad­vis­ing them they would not be al­lowed out of their homes af­ter mid­night.

At Sut­ton Street, a group of limers par­ty­ing out­side COSTAAT's South Cam­pus were ad­vised the area would be un­der watch af­ter mid­night.

By 11 pm, po­lice were spot check­ing ve­hi­cles at ran­dom near the San Fer­nan­do Tech­ni­cal In­sti­tute. The nor­mal­ly bustling Lord Street was al­most de­sert­ed by mid­night and the few peo­ple seen on the streets said they missed the Prime Min­is­ter's ad­dress and did not know a state of emer­gency had been en­forced. De­vout Mus­lims, who had spent time in the mosque af­ter break­ing their Ra­mad­han fast, al­so said they had missed the Prime Min­is­ter's ad­dress. Mis­in­for­ma­tion al­so was cir­cu­lat­ed, via BBM, and in many so­cial net­work­ing sites caus­ing pan­ic among cit­i­zens about the lo­ca­tions of hot spots. Sev­er­al peo­ple said they were hap­py about the cur­few be­cause the crime sit­u­a­tion was out of hand.

How­ev­er, blog­gers and callers to sev­er­al ra­dio sta­tions ex­pressed dis­sat­is­fac­tion that all of the in­for­ma­tion and di­rec­tives had not been re­leased by the Prime Min­is­ter. On Sun­day, Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar said more than 5,000 sol­diers would be de­ployed on the streets to as­sist po­lice of­fi­cers with pa­trols. Per­sad-Bisses­sar said the state of emer­gency would give mil­i­tary per­son­nel the au­thor­i­ty for search and seizure which they did not usu­al­ly have.