Just min­utes be­fore At­tor­ney Gen­er­al John Je­re­mie dropped the bomb­shell that there had been a ma­jor se­cu­ri­ty threat from a Bel­mont gang mem­ber last Fri­day that re­sult­ed in par­lia­men­tar­i­ans re­ceiv­ing en­hanced se­cu­ri­ty, he made a state­ment that was even more con­se­quen­tial.

“This coun­try, right now, is at war. We’ve de­clared a State of Emer­gency (SoE), we’ve re­newed it and we’ve de­clared an SoE again. That’s our de­c­la­ra­tion of war...,” he said, adding that the on­ly way to peace was through war.

How­ev­er, in light of the AG’s com­ments, the ques­tion that still needs to be asked and an­swered is whether we are re­al­ly at war with the crim­i­nals, since the 3,500-plus of­fi­cers of the Trinidad and To­ba­go De­fence Force do not cur­rent­ly seem to be ful­ly en­gaged in tak­ing the fight to the en­e­my.

In a sit­u­a­tion of war, we think it would be rea­son­able for us to ex­pect to see mem­bers of the Reg­i­ment, in col­lab­o­ra­tion with T&T Po­lice Ser­vice, pa­trolling from Char­lot­teville to Ce­dros, fo­cus­ing on the known hot spots, stop­ping and search­ing sus­pi­cious char­ac­ters, act­ing on in­tel­li­gence to ar­rest known crim­i­nals and seiz­ing arms caches and man­ning road blocks.

In fact, if T&T were at war against its gangs, army of­fi­cers would be too busy look­ing to ap­pre­hend home in­vaders, de­stroy­ing known drug blocks and seiz­ing il­le­gal drugs to have time for sec­ondary mis­sions.

The homes and of­fices of the peo­ple en­abling the traf­fick­ing in firearms, drugs and hu­mans—the bankers who are com­plic­it in large cash de­posits, the mon­ey laun­der­ers, ac­coun­tants, at­tor­neys and doc­tors—would be un­der con­stant sur­veil­lance.

Fur­ther­more, if T&T were at war against crim­i­nals, the Coast Guard would be en­er­gised to in­ter­dict and to dis­rupt the un­in­ter­rupt­ed flow of firearms and drugs through le­gal and il­le­gal ports. The Air Guard would al­so be strength­ened to im­prove aer­i­al sur­veil­lance, the De­fence Force Re­serves would be roped in­to the ef­fort and the Cus­toms and Im­mi­gra­tion de­part­ments would be called up­on to sup­port the ef­forts of oth­er law en­forcers.

If T&T were even ap­proach­ing a war foot­ing, the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al would reach out to the Chief Jus­tice to en­sure that the ju­di­cia­ry is in align­ment, by ex­plor­ing the pos­si­bil­i­ty of ex­pe­dit­ed jus­tice, per­haps via night courts.

Most im­por­tant­ly, as a small-is­land state, T&T would be reach­ing out to its re­gion­al and in­ter­na­tion­al al­lies to re­quest as­sis­tance if there were even a hint that the coun­try could face hos­til­i­ties.

On the is­sue of Mr Je­re­mie’s state­ment that the im­po­si­tion of back-to-back SoEs were this coun­try’s de­c­la­ra­tion of war, it must be point­ed out that all the SoEs give the Gov­ern­ment and law en­force­ment is the au­thor­i­ty to con­duct search­es with­out war­rant, ar­rest sus­pects on sus­pi­cion, en­force cur­fews, re­strict move­ment, seize prop­er­ty and de­tain in­di­vid­u­als, by­pass­ing bail pro­ce­dures.

These reg­u­la­tions can al­so tar­get on­line speech, pub­lic gath­er­ings and es­sen­tial ser­vices.

Giv­en all these pow­ers, the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al’s boast that “ab­solute force is what this Gov­ern­ment has brought to bear against the crim­i­nal el­e­ment,” rings quite hol­low.

In short, the SoEs give the Gov­ern­ment the abil­i­ty to be far more ag­gres­sive in fight­ing the gangs than it has been in its first year in of­fice.