It didn’t take long for the so­cial me­dia memes, po­lit­i­cal bick­er­ing and fake news to sur­face fol­low­ing the procla­ma­tion of the State of Emer­gency (SoE) by Pres­i­dent Chris­tine Kan­ga­loo yes­ter­day.

All kinds of re­ac­tions are to be ex­pect­ed in a na­tion al­ready on edge over an­oth­er record-high mur­der count which had rock­et­ed to 623 on Sun­day night, fol­low­ing reprisal shoot­ings in Priz­gar Lands, Laven­tille, that claimed five lives.

There was one more reprisal killing be­tween the time the Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Coun­cil con­vened and de­cid­ed on the SoE and the news con­fer­ence held by act­ing At­tor­ney Gen­er­al Stu­art Young and Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Fitzger­ald Hinds. That gang-re­lat­ed killing was com­mit­ted in broad day­light in Par­adise Heights, Mor­vant.

De­cem­ber is end­ing on a bloody note — 62 mur­ders and count­ing — cap­ping off a year of mass shoot­ings and oth­er open dis­plays of gang vi­o­lence in com­mu­ni­ties across the coun­try.

T&T is in the throes of a crime cri­sis. If we al­low them to, gang­sters will strip our twin is­lands of every ves­tige of de­cen­cy and safe­ty.

It does not help that law-abid­ing but po­lit­i­cal­ly po­larised cit­i­zens are turn­ing on one an­oth­er rather than the re­al en­e­mies.

The biggest threat to T&T is the mur­der­ers, em­bold­ened and em­pow­ered by easy ac­cess to il­le­gal­ly ac­quired AR-15s and AK-47s, who reg­u­lar­ly un­leash waves of vi­o­lence and ter­ror in this coun­try.

They are the di­rect tar­gets of the SoE.

In the com­ing days and weeks, there will be an all-out ef­fort to get crim­i­nal gangs and their il­le­gal, high-ve­loc­i­ty firearms off the streets. This ac­tion is nec­es­sary to pre­vent “in­creased and height­ened brazen acts of crim­i­nal ac­tiv­i­ty.”

For the fu­ture of T&T, cit­i­zens should not treat this SoE light­ly.

As 2025 dawns, the most im­por­tant res­o­lu­tion that any pa­tri­ot­ic Trin­bag­on­ian can make is to play a part in the restora­tion of law, or­der and peace to this coun­try.

There will be more than enough time to fo­cus on po­lit­i­cal agen­das and cam­paigns but right now the bat­tle is for the soul of this na­tion, which has for too long been rav­aged by crime.

De­bates about the ef­fi­ca­cy of the SoE, the im­pli­ca­tions for civ­il rights, and the pos­si­bil­i­ty of abuse of emer­gency pow­ers are to be ex­pect­ed. Cit­i­zens are still free to ex­press di­ver­gent views.

How­ev­er, care must be tak­en not to spread lies and half-truths which can block the flow of the rel­e­vant, im­por­tant in­for­ma­tion nec­es­sary to achieve the ob­jec­tives of this SoE.

This is not the time for un­pro­duc­tive com­par­isons to past SoEs. It is much more im­por­tant to en­sure that the emer­gency reg­u­la­tions, which give en­hanced pow­ers to the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice (TTPS), are ap­plied prop­er­ly and con­sis­tent­ly.

The An­ti-Gang Act and all the oth­er rel­e­vant laws should be ful­ly en­forced against the crim­i­nals who have been mo­bil­is­ing to un­leash a wave of dead­ly reprisals. That means ar­rests that lead to con­vic­tions in a way that does not leave loop­holes to be ex­ploit­ed at the ex­pense of tax­pay­ers.

Noth­ing should be al­lowed to hin­der the ef­forts of the TTPS, sup­port­ed by mem­bers of the T&T De­fence Force, against the crim­i­nal op­er­a­tives in Ras­ta City, Mus­lims, Sixx, ABG, and the var­i­ous oth­er splin­ter groups.

Let 2025 be the year the dead­ly reign of these crim­i­nals ends.