Shane Su­perville

Se­nior Re­porter

shane.su­perville@guardian.co.tt

Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Fitzger­ald Hinds has fired back at the Op­po­si­tion Leader Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar’s calls for a state of emer­gency (SoE) to tack­le crime, ar­gu­ing that such re­spons­es do not pro­duce mean­ing­ful long-term changes.

Dur­ing her tenure as prime min­is­ter un­der the then Peo­ple’s Part­ner­ship ad­min­is­tra­tion in 2011, Per­sad-Bisses­sar in­tro­duced a state of emer­gency in sev­er­al des­ig­nat­ed ‘hotspot’ ar­eas across T&T.

The SoE, which was im­ple­ment­ed in re­sponse to a se­ries of mur­ders, last­ed from Au­gust to De­cem­ber of 2011 and re­sult­ed in sev­er­al sus­pect­ed crim­i­nals be­ing ar­rest­ed, on­ly to be even­tu­al­ly re­leased ow­ing to a lack of ev­i­dence.

Sev­er­al of those de­tained dur­ing the SoE even­tu­al­ly sued the State for wrong­ful im­pris­on­ment.

Dur­ing the Op­po­si­tion’s first An­ti-Crime Town Hall meet­ing on Mon­day, Per­sad-Bisses­sar re­newed calls for a SoE.

How­ev­er, dur­ing his ad­dress at a Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment pub­lic meet­ing in San Juan last night, Hinds dis­agreed with the sug­ges­tion, not­ing that such strate­gies did not get to the root cause of the vi­o­lence.

Re­spond­ing to re­cent com­par­isons with Ja­maica’s own SoEs in cer­tain parish­es to clamp down on crim­i­nals, Hinds said this did not have a long-term ef­fect, not­ing that mur­ders con­tin­ued in Ja­maica even in the midst of the lock­downs.

“Well, un­for­tu­nate­ly, to show these things don’t nec­es­sar­i­ly work, be­cause they don’t get at the root caus­es of crime. We had that here in 2020 and 2011 and we didn’t get at the root caus­es of crime. So it has it’s pur­pose but not to get at the root caus­es of these crimes that we fac­ing,” Hinds said.

“I want to tell you by the 15th of this month Ja­maica was hav­ing mur­ders in the midst of all of these state of emer­gen­cies. We know from their ex­pe­ri­ence that is not nec­es­sar­i­ly the for­mu­la.”

In his own sug­ges­tion, how­ev­er, Hinds urged the na­tion­al com­mu­ni­ty, in­clud­ing the Ju­di­cia­ry, to col­lab­o­rate against crim­i­nal­i­ty.

He said laws for peo­ple caught in pos­ses­sion of en­vi­ron­men­tal­ly pro­tect­ed wildlife cur­rent­ly car­ry stiffer penal­ties than peo­ple found with guns and am­mu­ni­tion and urged the Ju­di­cia­ry to re­con­sid­er what he de­scribed as a “slap on wrist” pun­ish­ment.

“We all live here, we all suf­fer here at the hands of these crim­i­nals, in­clud­ing the Ju­di­cia­ry, and pay at­ten­tion to the way we re­spond to crim­i­nal­i­ty in this coun­try.”