Da­reece Po­lo

Se­nior Re­porter

da­reece.po­lo@guardian.co.tt

There have been 1,282 ar­rests by the po­lice since the State of Emer­gency (SoE) was de­clared on Ju­ly 18.

Sta­tis­tics from the TTPS yes­ter­day al­so showed that of­fi­cers car­ried out more than 3000 an­ti-crime op­er­a­tions. Among those de­tained so far are Prison Su­per­vi­sor Garth Gua­da and a po­lice cor­po­ral. Au­thor­i­ties al­so con­firmed that Ra­jaee and Hamid Ali were moved to mil­i­tary de­ten­tion fa­cil­i­ties. Of­fi­cers al­so seized 92 firearms, over 1,200 rounds of am­mu­ni­tion, 6,752 grams of co­caine, 216,625 grams of cannabis, more than 1,000 ec­sta­sy pills, 15 grams of MD­MA, as well as quan­ti­ties of LSD, dried mush­rooms, 80 cannabis plants, and 30 seedlings.

Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar, speak­ing at the clos­ing cer­e­mo­ny of the JA­VA Com­mu­ni­ty Crick­et Pro­gramme in Pe­nal yes­ter­day, de­fend­ed the emer­gency mea­sures, in­clud­ing con­cerns about the ar­rest of se­cu­ri­ty of­fi­cials.

“I think that was part of the ex­er­cise—there were se­nior of­fi­cers in­volved in some of the breach­es tak­ing place. I think the SoE is work­ing very well. The crime rates are def­i­nite­ly down. And, how con­cerned am I about breach­es? Well, that’s why we have law en­force­ment out in full force—mil­i­tary plus TTPS.”

But de­spite the sta­tis­tics and Gov­ern­ment’s sat­is­fac­tion, crim­i­nol­o­gist Dau­rius Figueira has ques­tioned the lack of trans­paren­cy over the con­tin­u­a­tion of the SoE, which was ex­tend­ed on Ju­ly 28.

“In the first place, we were told that there was a grave threat em­a­nat­ing from with­in the prison sys­tem... Sub­se­quent­ly, we were told in the pub­lic do­main that the threat has in fact been mit­i­gat­ed, but we are still hear­ing talk about a threat that need­ed such sever­i­ty that you need­ed to post­pone the In­de­pen­dence Day pa­rade, and the ques­tion then aris­es—how many threats are you speak­ing about?”

Figueira al­so ar­gued that the ap­proach has been in­con­sis­tent.

“Every­body should have been picked up im­me­di­ate­ly with the call­ing of the State of Emer­gency—you just pass and round up every­body, pun­to fi­nale, and go with every­body, but this thing is go­ing drag­ging out, drag­ging out, drag­ging out, and you ask your­self... ‘Are you mak­ing it up as you go along?”

He fur­ther sug­gest­ed the Gov­ern­ment may be ex­ploit­ing the cri­sis.

Figueira al­so pressed the au­thor­i­ties to clar­i­fy whether the orig­i­nal threat was tru­ly neu­tralised. On Au­gust 11, Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Al­lis­ter Gue­var­ro an­nounced that the po­lice re­sponse had shift­ed from dis­rup­tion to the sys­tem­at­ic dis­man­tling of an or­gan­ised crim­i­nal gang.

Cit­i­zens not con­vinced

Crim­i­nol­o­gist Dr Randy Seep­er­sad added that ar­rests alone were not enough.

“I think it’s a good sign, but for me, I don’t just want to see one case. Cor­rup­tion is some­thing that is prob­a­bly quite en­dem­ic and quite... much more wide­spread than I think we might even re­alise.”

For many cit­i­zens, the promised im­prove­ments in safe­ty have yet to be felt.

“I am not see­ing much re­sults of it so far,” said Navin Sir­joo, 45, an au­dio-vi­su­al tech­ni­cal en­gi­neer from Ari­ma.

“I don’t feel any safer with the SoE. To me, it’s the same sit­u­a­tion as be­fore,” added Re­nea Bourne, 22, a cus­tomer ser­vice rep­re­sen­ta­tive al­so from Ari­ma.

Justin Al­lard, 32, a dri­ver from San Juan, not­ed: “Crim­i­nal el­e­ments are still there. Doesn’t re­al­ly feel like much has changed. But, as far as the po­lice pres­ence, I do feel more of a pres­ence from them.”