With a promise of restor­ing or­der and dis­man­tling the stran­gle­hold of or­gan­ised crime, a State of Emer­gency (SoE) was de­clared here in Trinidad & To­ba­go (T&T) on Ju­ly 18. 

How­ev­er, in the weeks since, rev­e­la­tions emerg­ing from be­hind prison walls and, most shock­ing­ly, from with­in the na­tion’s pre­mier mil­i­tary base, have on­ly served to erode pub­lic con­fi­dence in our de­fence sys­tem.

It is now a mat­ter of record that high-pro­file crim­i­nals, sup­pos­ed­ly un­der lock and key at the Max­i­mum Se­cu­ri­ty Prison and lat­er housed at Staubles Bay and Teteron Bar­racks, have still been able to com­mu­ni­cate with the out­side world, con­tin­u­ing their gang ac­tiv­i­ties.

From re­cent­ly gazetted de­ten­tion or­ders, we have learnt that not on­ly were they plot­ting vi­o­lent op­er­a­tions, in­clud­ing at­tacks on pub­lic of­fi­cials, but they were do­ing so with the as­sis­tance of in­sid­ers sworn to up­hold law and or­der.

The ar­rest of a se­nior prison su­per­vi­sor ac­cused of col­lud­ing with gang lead­ers con­firms what cit­i­zens have long sus­pect­ed: the rot runs deep, and the very in­sti­tu­tions meant to pro­tect us have been com­pro­mised.

The breach of se­cu­ri­ty at Teteron Bar­racks is es­pe­cial­ly damn­ing. 

This is not a low-lev­el fa­cil­i­ty or a poor­ly re­sourced out­post, but one of the cor­ner­stones of na­tion­al de­fence. 

That high-pro­file de­tainees could ma­nip­u­late or ex­ploit con­di­tions there points to a break­down that should trou­ble every cit­i­zen. 

If the mil­i­tary, the sup­posed fi­nal line of de­fence, can­not be trust­ed to hold firm, then who ex­act­ly can the na­tion turn to?

It is al­so no se­cret that many have lost faith in the third pil­lar of this crum­bling ed­i­fice, the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice, which has long been per­ceived as, at best, in­ef­fec­tive and, at worst, com­plic­it in the wors­en­ing do­mes­tic crime sit­u­a­tion. 

Pub­lic con­fi­dence has been dec­i­mat­ed by al­le­ga­tions of cor­rup­tion and a dis­mal­ly low de­tec­tion rate for se­ri­ous crimes, caus­ing many cit­i­zens to feel they are on their own against crim­i­nals who op­er­ate with im­puni­ty.

Since the start of the lat­est SoE, the lim­it­ed num­ber of ar­rests and even few­er pros­e­cu­tions have done lit­tle to im­prove pub­lic per­cep­tion of the Po­lice Ser­vice.

The re­al­i­ty is that un­der the cov­er of an SoE, three key agen­cies of na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty—the po­lice, pris­ons, and the mil­i­tary—have been put to the test and have been found se­ri­ous­ly lack­ing, undig­ni­fied­ly ex­posed even, leav­ing the coun­try to won­der aloud: Who will ul­ti­mate­ly guard the guards? 

If the po­lice are seen as com­pro­mised, the pris­ons pen­e­trat­ed, and the mil­i­tary bases breached, then the three pil­lars of na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty ap­pear to be stand­ing in quick­sand.

This coun­try ex­pects bet­ter. 

Our Gov­ern­ment, there­fore, has much work to do to ad­dress the can­cer of cor­rup­tion and col­lu­sion with­in the se­cu­ri­ty agen­cies. 

Left un­done, the SoE will not be re­mem­bered for turn­ing the tide of crime, but rather a last­ing em­blem of lost faith and pub­lic trust in our na­tion­al de­fence sys­tem.