Da­reece Po­lo

Se­nior Re­porter

da­reece.po­lo@guardian.co.tt

The Op­po­si­tion has firm­ly stat­ed it will not sup­port any gov­ern­ment ini­tia­tive to clas­si­fy in­dis­crim­i­nate shoot­ings as acts of ter­ror­ism—a stance that one crim­i­nol­o­gist warns could neg­a­tive­ly im­pact re­gion­al tourism.

While Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress Leader Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar has dis­missed the pro­pos­al as a “PR gim­mick,” two for­mer po­lice com­mis­sion­ers have ex­pressed sup­port for the move.

On Fri­day, Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley told re­porters dur­ing the clos­ing me­dia con­fer­ence for the 48th Reg­u­lar Meet­ing of the Con­fer­ence of Heads of Gov­ern­ment in Bar­ba­dos that “acts of vi­o­lence in the pub­lic space in cer­tain in­stances must now be re­gard­ed as acts of ter­ror­ism.”

Row­ley, who is al­so Cari­com’s lead head with re­spon­si­bil­i­ty for crime and se­cu­ri­ty, dis­closed that Be­lize’s for­mer at­tor­ney gen­er­al God­frey Smith has been tasked with re­view­ing leg­isla­tive tem­plates across mem­ber states and com­ing up with new leg­isla­tive pro­pos­als for con­sid­er­a­tion by the heads.

He al­so clar­i­fied that the pro­posed leg­isla­tive changes are meant to tack­le “in­dis­crim­i­nate shoot­ings” where the per­pe­tra­tors en­dan­ger all and sundry and in­sist­ed that it dif­fers from Cari­com’s de­c­la­ra­tion of crime as a pub­lic health emer­gency and its ban on as­sault ri­fles.

But Per­sad-Bisses­sar de­cried the an­nounce­ment as in­ef­fec­tive.

“This is an­oth­er PR gim­mick like the crime sym­po­sium, crime as a pub­lic health is­sue, blam­ing Amer­i­can gun man­u­fac­tur­ers. Typ­i­cal non­sense to de­flect from fail­ure to deal with crim­i­nal­i­ty. Very soon the Gov­ern­ment may blame cli­mate change for crime,” she quipped.

The UNC leader mocked the de­c­la­ra­tion, sug­gest­ing it would be as in­ef­fec­tive as the Gov­ern­ment’s at­tempts to fix West In­dies crick­et. She made it clear that the Op­po­si­tion will not sup­port the mea­sure in Par­lia­ment, nor would a UNC ad­min­is­tra­tion im­ple­ment it.

“We have rolled out nu­mer­ous an­ti-crime plans and jus­tice re­form mea­sures, which we will be adopt­ing. We have no in­ten­tion of adopt­ing this PR gim­mick­ry. The UNC will not be a part of that. We are not look­ing to fool any­one for a vote. We will di­rect­ly take on the re­spon­si­bil­i­ty to bring down the crim­i­nal el­e­ment in Trinidad and To­ba­go.”

Un­de­terred, Row­ley yes­ter­day dis­missed her com­ments, ask­ing, “What did the UNC ever sup­port ex­cept klep­toc­ra­cy, false pa­pers, and pres­i­dent (Juan) Guai­do?”

This, as he ref­er­enced the Op­po­si­tion’s past sup­port for Venezuela’s self-pro­claimed pres­i­dent Guai­do, who ini­tial­ly had West­ern back­ing be­fore it was with­drawn.

For­mer top cops wel­come move

Mean­while, for­mer po­lice com­mis­sion­er Gary Grif­fith, who al­so served as Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter un­der the Peo­ple’s Part­ner­ship ad­min­is­tra­tion (2013–2015), wel­comed the move, not­ing that he rec­om­mend­ed that gangs be treat­ed as ter­ror­ists in Jan­u­ary 2024.

“It will now make it a cap­i­tal of­fence. It means that that in­di­vid­ual will no longer have bail. It means that that per­son can be in­car­cer­at­ed for 20-plus years. And the per­sons in­volved in aid­ing and abet­ting that per­son and get­ting that type of firearm that can kill 35 per­sons in three sec­onds, they can al­so be deemed a ter­ror­ist.”

How­ev­er, he stressed that Cari­com must move be­yond “rum shop talk” and take con­crete ac­tion on its agree­ments. Cit­ing an ex­am­ple, he point­ed out the re­gion’s fail­ure to prop­er­ly im­ple­ment bor­der se­cu­ri­ty mea­sures. He al­so rec­om­mend­ed that each mem­ber state es­tab­lish a Na­tion­al Op­er­a­tions Cen­tre to col­lect and analyse in­for­ma­tion, trans­form­ing it in­to ac­tion­able in­tel­li­gence.

Ad­dress­ing po­ten­tial crit­i­cism that crim­i­nals may not be ap­pre­hend­ed ow­ing to T&T’s low de­tec­tion rate, he as­sured that the mea­sure would be ef­fec­tive­ly en­forced.

“On many oc­ca­sions, when I was com­mis­sion­er, there was an in­di­vid­ual we held with ten au­to­mat­ic weapons, ten! And a judge gave this per­son $50,000 bail, and he went back out on­to the streets.

“Those are the things that can help. Be­cause on many oc­ca­sions, the po­lice can ap­pre­hend per­sons with an au­to­mat­ic weapon, whether he tried to im­port it, whether he found it in his pos­ses­sion, or whether it was in a road­block. Those are many oc­ca­sions per­sons have been ap­pre­hend­ed, but they have gone back out on­to the streets, be­ing held with as­sault weapons.”

Sim­i­lar sen­ti­ments were echoed by for­mer top cop Stephen Williams, who an­tic­i­pates sig­nif­i­cant ben­e­fits un­der ex­ist­ing an­ti-ter­ror­ism laws.

“On the face of it, if you are fo­cus­ing on par­tic­u­lar types of vi­o­lence in­volv­ing firearms and mass shoot­ings and you want to lift it to the lev­el of ter­ror­ism, I would say there will be sig­nif­i­cant ben­e­fits in the con­text of the kind of strength and pow­er that is vest­ed in the law around ter­ror­ism.”

Crim­i­nol­o­gist says it could harm tourism

Crim­i­nol­o­gist Dau­rius Figueira de­scribed the an­nounce­ment as a “po­lit­i­cal state­ment,” not­ing that Cari­com has no ju­ris­dic­tion to des­ig­nate its mem­bers to fol­low its cho­sen path, leav­ing it up to in­di­vid­ual na­tions.

He em­pha­sised that such a de­c­la­ra­tion does not au­to­mat­i­cal­ly make the is­sue im­me­di­ate­ly pros­e­cutable, as sub­stan­tial ev­i­dence must first be gath­ered.

“What it boils down to is talk. The ques­tion is, where is the ac­tion?” he asked.

Figueira al­so warned that de­clar­ing in­dis­crim­i­nate shoot­ings as acts of ter­ror could hurt tourism in the re­gion.

“The sig­nal you will be send­ing is that you now have a prob­lem with transna­tion­al or­gan­ised crime that is out of con­trol, and you are now re­sort­ing to ex­treme mea­sures in an at­tempt to put a lid on it. That’s the mes­sage that’s sent, and that is the mes­sage that was sent with our SoE.

“What about those is­lands, es­pe­cial­ly Ja­maica, Bar­ba­dos, An­tigua, Bar­bu­da, Grena­da heav­i­ly de­pen­dent up­on–St Lu­cia es­pe­cial­ly–their tourist plant. And you are now mak­ing this state­ment.”

He said Cari­com na­tions are in a state of po­lit­i­cal de­nial when they in­sist the re­gion was fac­ing a gang prob­lem and not a transna­tion­al or­gan­ised crime prob­lem. He said the re­gion’s po­lice struc­ture must be re­vamped and trans­formed in­to 21st-cen­tu­ry or­gan­i­sa­tions to curb es­ca­lat­ing crime.

De­spite con­cerns about a neg­a­tive im­pact on the sec­tor, To­ba­go Ho­tel and Tourism As­so­ci­a­tion Pres­i­dent Al­pha Lorde said they have ques­tions about the pro­pos­al but will sup­port any ef­fort to com­bat crime.

“By and large, any­thing that curbs the crime sit­u­a­tion as it plagues Trinidad and To­ba­go at the mo­ment and deals with the essence of crim­i­nal­i­ty, I am very open to it, and I think all the mem­bers of the as­so­ci­a­tion will be open to any­thing that ac­tu­al­ly fo­cus­es on curb­ing it.”

At­tempts to reach tourism min­is­ter Ran­dall Mitchell for a com­ment were un­suc­cess­ful.