The Law As­so­ci­a­tion of T&T (LATT) has ex­pressed hope that the on­go­ing State of Emer­gency (SoE) will be a suc­cess.

In a me­dia re­lease yes­ter­day, the as­so­ci­a­tion said: “The Law As­so­ci­a­tion of Trinidad and To­ba­go sin­cere­ly hopes that the stat­ed ob­jec­tives of the SoE will be re­alised in the short­est pos­si­ble time.”

The as­so­ci­a­tion re­it­er­at­ed that un­der Part III of the Con­sti­tu­tion, an SoE can be pro­claimed if there is a sig­nif­i­cant na­tion­al threat to en­dan­ger pub­lic safe­ty.

“The mur­der toll for 2024 reached a his­toric high and ut­ter­ances made by the Ho­n­ourable Act­ing At­tor­ney Gen­er­al of Trinidad and To­ba­go and the Ho­n­ourable Min­is­ter of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty when the SoE was de­clared, sug­gest­ed that the Gov­ern­ment and the po­lice had rea­son to be­lieve that re­cent gang-re­lat­ed mur­ders were like­ly to pro­voke re­tal­ia­to­ry ac­tion and that the de­c­la­ra­tion of a SoE was nec­es­sary to treat with a feared fur­ther es­ca­la­tion in vi­o­lent ac­tiv­i­ty,” it said.

“This, of course, is a judge­ment call that is the Gov­ern­ment’s to make,” it added.

It stat­ed that gang-re­lat­ed vi­o­lence has un­doubt­ed­ly pro­vid­ed a di­rect threat to the safe­ty of cit­i­zens.

“Re­ports of com­mu­ni­ties op­er­at­ing un­der the ef­fec­tive con­trol of cer­tain gangs have been wide­spread ... Pub­lic util­i­ties re­port­ed­ly re­main un­ser­viced be­cause re­pair­men are fear­ful of falling prey to ex­tor­tion and vi­o­lence,” it said.

“Even the na­tion’s health work­ers, as they strug­gle to as­sist par­tic­i­pants in and vic­tims of, vi­o­lent gang ac­tiv­i­ty, have been caught in the cross­fire be­tween war­ring gang fac­tions.”

LATT point­ed out that with the de­c­la­ra­tion of the SoE, the po­lice do not need to act in a man­ner con­sis­tent with the fun­da­men­tal rights and free­doms af­ford­ed to cit­i­zens un­der the Con­sti­tu­tion.

“Ne­far­i­ous gang vi­o­lence may be the tar­get of the pre­scribed treat­ment, but the cor­pus of our cit­i­zen­ry must al­so en­dure the treat­ment,” it said.