KAY­MAR JOR­DAN

Man­ag­ing Ed­i­tor

kay­mar.jor­dan@guardian.co.tt

The re­cent State of Emer­gency (SoE) an­nounced by Gov­ern­ment on De­cem­ber 30 last year and lift­ed on April 14, has been giv­en a fail­ing grade by cit­i­zens.

Re­spon­dents to a Guardian Me­dia-com­mis­sioned pub­lic opin­ion poll, con­duct­ed by Pro­fes­sor Hamid Ghany, were al­so asked to rate the per­for­mance of act­ing Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice Ju­nior Ben­jamin, who re­cent­ly hailed the SoE a suc­cess.

Ben­jamin, who was foist­ed in­to the top crime-fight­ing role af­ter his sub­stan­tive boss, Er­la Hare­wood-Christo­pher, was un­cer­e­mo­ni­ous­ly sus­pend­ed at the end of Jan­u­ary amid a weapons probe re­lat­ed to the Strate­gic Ser­vices Agency (SSA), re­port­ed last week that a to­tal of 4,038 peo­ple were ar­rest­ed dur­ing the SoE, which last­ed 105 days and in­volved in a to­tal of 5,192 op­er­a­tions, in­clud­ing 36,000 search­es of homes, ve­hi­cles and spaces.

How­ev­er, at the end of the SoE pe­ri­od, which in­clud­ed one ex­ten­sion grant­ed by Par­lia­ment on Jan­u­ary 13, on­ly 1,590 peo­ple were ac­tu­al­ly charged with of­fences, even though Ben­jamin has linked it to a re­duc­tion in homi­cides, which re­port­ed­ly fell from 160 in 2024 to 113 in 2025 and a de­cline in rob­beries, down from 750 in 2024 to 475 this year.

The in­de­pen­dent sur­vey, con­duct­ed be­tween April 10 and 13, so­licit­ed the views of cit­i­zens in 11 mar­gin­al con­stituen­cies in Trinidad, as well as in To­ba­go.

Asked to com­ment on the SoE as a crime-fight­ing mea­sure, 33 per cent of re­spon­dents in Trinidad said it was in­ef­fec­tive and 27 per cent said it was very in­ef­fec­tive, while 26 per cent felt it yield­ed av­er­age re­sults. On­ly 12 per cent of those sur­veyed felt it was ef­fec­tive as a crime con­trol mea­sure and just one per cent deemed it very ef­fec­tive.

Sim­i­lar sen­ti­ments were ex­pressed in To­ba­go, where 33 per cent of re­spon­dents de­scribed the SoE as very in­ef­fec­tive, 20 per cent in­ef­fec­tive and 29 per cent as av­er­age.

At the op­po­site end of the spec­trum, 14 per cent of re­spon­dents in To­ba­go said the SoE was ef­fec­tive and three per cent very ef­fec­tive.

In analysing the da­ta, poll­ster Ghany said pub­lic dis­ap­point­ment with the SoE as a crime-fight­ing tool was ev­i­dent, with the ma­jor­i­ty of those sur­veyed de­scrib­ing it as ei­ther in­ef­fec­tive or very in­ef­fec­tive. He added that based on the da­ta, it was very clear that the SoE was seen as a “fail­ure” in the pub­lic’s eyes.

Re­spon­dents to the sur­vey were al­so asked to rate the per­for­mance of act­ing CoP Ben­jamin.

In Trinidad, the ma­jor­i­ty of re­spon­dents (46 per cent) de­scribed his per­for­mance as “av­er­age;” 19 per cent said he was do­ing a bad job and 18 per cent said he was do­ing a very bad job.

On­ly 17 per cent of those sur­veyed in Trinidad felt Ben­jamin was ac­tu­al­ly do­ing a good job.

How­ev­er, in To­ba­go, while 43 per cent of re­spon­dents felt Ben­jamin was do­ing an “av­er­age” job, 25 per cent said his per­for­mance has been “good” and ten per cent “very good.”

Of the re­main­ing re­spon­dents, ten per cent said “it was still too ear­ly to say,” nine per cent said he was do­ing a very bad job and three per cent said he was do­ing a bad job.

“On both counts (SoE and Ben­jamin’s per­for­mance), these re­spons­es did not pro­vide any con­vinc­ing an­swers as to the ef­fec­tive­ness of the fight against crime in our so­ci­ety,” con­clud­ed Ghany.

The poll was con­duct­ed in the mar­gin­al con­stituen­cies of Barataria/San Juan, Ch­agua­nas East, Cu­mu­to/Man­zanil­la, La Hor­quet­ta/Tal­paro, Ma­yaro, Moru­ga/Table­land, Pointe-a-Pierre (now called Clax­ton Bay), San Fer­nan­do West, St Joseph, To­co/San­gre Grande and Tu­na­puna, as well as To­ba­go.

It has a mar­gin of er­ror of +/- 2.5 per cent for Trinidad and +/- 4.0 per cent based on re­cent po­lit­i­cal and bound­ary shifts.