Derek Achong

Se­nior Re­porter

derek.achong@guardian.co.tt

Lawyers have ques­tioned why a State of Emer­gency (SoE) was pro­claimed by the Gov­ern­ment with­out reg­u­la­tions be­ing in place.

When the SoE was an­nounced by Min­is­ter of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Fitzger­ald Hinds and act­ing At­tor­ney Gen­er­al Stu­art Young yes­ter­day morn­ing, Young stat­ed that as­so­ci­at­ed reg­u­la­tions, which would de­fine the ad­di­tion­al pow­ers af­ford­ed to law en­force­ment of­fi­cers, were draft­ed and would be pub­lished with­in hours.

How­ev­er, the reg­u­la­tions were not pub­lished up to 6 pm yes­ter­day.

In a tele­phone in­ter­view, Se­nior Coun­sel Is­rael Khan said, “They pan­icked. They should have qui­et­ly ad­vised the pres­i­dent and put every­thing in place.”

Khan ques­tioned whether the de­lay would ham­per the ef­fec­tive­ness of the SoE.

“Don’t you think by the time they reach the hotspots, all the firearms dis­ap­pear?” Khan said.

“If that hap­pens it would turn out to be noth­ing but a joke,” he said.

De­spite his con­cerns, Khan wel­comed the move as he not­ed that the Crim­i­nal Bar As­so­ci­a­tion (CBA) that he heads has been call­ing for a SoE to ad­dress ram­pant vi­o­lent crime since ear­li­er this year.

“While the SoE is very much too late, it is nev­er­the­less wel­comed,” he said.

Khan crit­i­cised Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley for re­peat­ed­ly dis­miss­ing the mea­sure in the past.

“Now that the killings are to­tal­ly out of con­trol, and the en­light­ened, non-aligned peo­ple are de­mand­ing his re­moval from of­fice, he has fi­nal­ly got­ten some sense in his head,” Khan said.

Asked if he be­lieved the po­lice would make a large num­ber of ar­rests dur­ing the SoE as was done dur­ing one im­ple­ment­ed by the Peo­ple’s Part­ner­ship gov­ern­ment in 2011, Khan said no, as he not­ed that he head­ed a team of se­nior coun­sel that was re­tained to ad­vise the po­lice on over 200 cas­es in which per­sons were charged for be­ing gang mem­bers.

Khan point­ed out that most of the cas­es were dis­con­tin­ued by the Of­fice of the Di­rec­tor of Pub­lic Pros­e­cu­tions (DPP) af­ter it was dis­cov­ered that ev­i­dence col­lect­ed against the al­leged gang mem­bers could not be used as such was col­lect­ed be­fore gang leg­is­la­tion was pro­claimed.

“That would not re­peat it­self. I think what they are do­ing now is not so much to ar­rest peo­ple for com­mit­ting acts of vi­o­lence and be­ing gang mem­bers. I think what they are hop­ing to do is seize as many pow­er­ful firearms as pos­si­ble, and if that is done, it would be some­what suc­cess­ful,” Khan said.

Con­tact­ed yes­ter­day, Lar­ry Lal­la, SC, al­so took is­sue with the de­lay in pub­lish­ing the reg­u­la­tions.

“It is dif­fi­cult to com­ment com­pre­hen­sive­ly un­til the reg­u­la­tions which ac­com­pa­ny the SoE are pub­lished,” he said.

Lal­la ex­plained that the reg­u­la­tions would help de­fine the con­sti­tu­tion­al rights of cit­i­zens that would be sus­pend­ed un­der the SoE.

“The reg­u­la­tions will guide cit­i­zens as to in­ter­ac­tions with the po­lice, what they can ex­pect to hap­pen, and how they could ex­pect the po­lice to in­ter­act with them and what rights are be­ing tak­en away,” Lal­la said.

He al­so dis­missed pub­lic crit­i­cism that a lack of a cur­few would ren­der the SoE in­ef­fec­tive.

“That is not nec­es­sar­i­ly so,” he said.

Lal­la said that the abil­i­ty of the po­lice to de­tain sus­pect­ed crim­i­nals and search prop­er­ties with­out a war­rant could be a use­ful tool for po­lice of­fi­cers.

“Even with­out a cur­few, a state of emer­gency is po­ten­tial­ly a very pow­er­ful weapon in the hands of the po­lice,” he said.

“As a coun­try, we have to wait to see how ef­fec­tive­ly the po­lice would be able to use this new weapon that they have been af­ford­ed by the gov­ern­ment,” he added.

In a state­ment, at­tor­ney Kiel Tak­lals­ingh ques­tioned the need for and log­ic of an SoE.

Stat­ing that the pow­ers grant­ed un­der an SoE are al­ready part of ex­ist­ing law, Tak­lals­ingh said, “For in­stance, we were told that this SoE is need­ed be­cause the po­lice re­quire ex­tra­or­di­nary pow­ers to search premis­es and ar­rest per­sons. First­ly, it is a straight­for­ward process to ob­tain a search war­rant to search premis­es, and ju­di­cial of­fi­cers grant these war­rants as a mat­ter of course.”

“Sec­ond­ly, it is al­ready the law that the po­lice can ar­rest and de­tain per­sons if they have rea­son­able sus­pi­cion that some­one has com­mit­ted an of­fence or is about to com­mit an of­fence,” he added.

He stat­ed that crime could not be ad­dressed through short-term fix­es such as a SoE.

“It re­quires a bold and sys­temic over­haul of our crim­i­nal jus­tice sys­tem,” he said.

He rec­om­mend­ed that the gov­ern­ment should fo­cus on en­sur­ing crim­i­nal cas­es move from charge to tri­al in three to six months to ad­dress pro­mo­tion is­sues in the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice (TTPS) and ad­dress the root cause of the pro­lif­er­a­tion of il­le­gal firearms.

“What in­tel­li­gence mea­sures and scan­ning sys­tems are in place at our le­gal ports to pre­vent such smug­gling? These are the ques­tions that de­mand ur­gency,” he said.

In a state­ment, crim­i­nal de­fence at­tor­ney Wayne Sturge, who rep­re­sent­ed dozens of de­tainees dur­ing the last SoE and has been re­cent­ly se­lect­ed by the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC) to con­test next year’s gen­er­al elec­tion, point­ed out that the last SoE was strong­ly crit­i­cised by Row­ley while he was op­po­si­tion leader.

“Isn’t it iron­ic that the ex­act same rea­son giv­en for this SoE is the ex­act same rea­son for the 2011 SoE and which was round­ly crit­i­cised by Dr Row­ley as not be­ing a valid rea­son and which he deemed not jus­ti­fi­able and which he claimed would be a mon­u­men­tal fail­ure,” Sturge said.

“It again demon­strates his poor un­der­stand­ing of what is re­quired to have sus­tain­able re­duc­tion in vi­o­lent crime,” he added.