Long-await­ed leg­is­la­tion for pep­per spray use will be de­bat­ed in the Sen­ate next Tues­day—and apart from ap­pli­cants over 18, cer­tain cat­e­gories of law en­force­ment will al­so be al­lowed to use it in their du­ties.

Plus there will be huge fines, along with jail terms, for mis­use of the non-lethal weapon.

At­tor­ney Gen­er­al Faris Al-Rawi con­firmed de­vel­op­ments Wednes­day.

Pro­pos­als for pep­per spray use are an amend­ment to the Firearms Act. It re­quires on­ly a sim­ple ma­jor­i­ty of votes—large­ly Gov­ern­ment’s—for pas­sage

Al-Rawi said, “I’m pleased to pi­lot this amend­ment next week, in­tro­duc­ing pep­per spray in­to Trinidad and To­ba­go. While there’s much talk on it, par­tic­u­lar­ly from the Op­po­si­tion, it’s a fact no oth­er gov­ern­ment had the courage to do this.”

“Al­so, this isn’t the cure-all for the dif­fi­cul­ties of vile, hor­ri­ble vi­o­lence against women and vul­ner­a­ble peo­ple.

“I re­mind that Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar and Sad­dam Ho­sein, es­pe­cial­ly, stand as the forces against re­mov­ing and con­strain­ing mon­sters that walk among us by their fail­ure to sup­port amend­ments on bail law, Wit­ness Anonymi­ty, cy­ber­crime, the An­ti-Gang bill. It demon­strates their view that when T&T fails, they suc­ceed. I call on both to stop play­ing smart with fool­ish­ness.”

The bill be­ing in­tro­duced is the cul­mi­na­tion of the Gov­ern­ment’s work on non-lethal weapons fol­low­ing pub­lic pres­sure af­ter the mur­ders of women, in­clud­ing Ashan­ti Ri­ley and An­drea Bharatt, which prompt­ed calls for use of pep­per spray, Tasers or oth­er non-lethal weapons.

Gov­ern­ment first stat­ed it would con­sult ex­perts fol­low­ing con­cerns the de­vice would be used by cul­prits against peo­ple who had them. But Po­lice sup­port­ed pep­per spray use. Con­sid­er­a­tion be­gan. Fol­low­ing pub­lic out­cry af­ter Bharatt’s mur­der it was an­nounced that pep­per spray would be ap­proved with a per­mit sys­tem.

The bill was ap­proved by Cab­i­net, ex­am­ined by its Fi­nance and Gen­er­al Pur­pos­es sub-com­mit­tee and re­leased for de­bate. The bill, which places pep­per spray un­der the Firearm Act, pro­vides for two types of per­mits.

Much like firearms, peo­ple will have to ap­ply to the Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice or an au­tho­rised of­fi­cer for a per­mit to im­port, ex­port, di­vert, sell, man­u­fac­ture, pro­duce or dis­trib­ute pep­per spray.

Ac­cord­ing to the pro­pos­al, those who wish to pur­chase, ac­quire or have it in their pos­ses­sion will ap­ply for a Pep­per Spray per­mit.

Both types of per­mits will be grant­ed to peo­ple over the age of 18.

In the case of those 16 and over, the par­ent, guardian or per­son with re­spon­si­bil­i­ty for the child, must give writ­ten per­mis­sion for the child to be in pos­ses­sion of pep­per spray.

For busi­ness peo­ple, a li­cense to im­port, pro­duce or man­u­fac­ture pep­per spray will cost $50 and be for five years. For hold­ers, a li­cence to pur­chase, ac­quire or have pep­per spray will cost the same and be for three years.

Per­mits won’t be grant­ed to peo­ple whom the Com­mis­sion­er/of­fi­cer has rea­son to be­lieve to be of “in­tem­per­ate habits or un­sound mind, or to be for any rea­son un­fit to be en­trust­ed with pep­per spray.”

It is pro­posed that Es­tate Po­lice, Spe­cial Re­serve Of­fi­cers, Mu­nic­i­pal Po­lice Of­fi­cers and “such oth­er per­sons” as ap­proved by the Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter to have in their pos­ses­sion pep­per spray when per­form­ing their func­tions. This sec­tor had ap­pealed for years for use of non-lethal weapons.

On­ly for self-de­fence

Peo­ple au­tho­rised to pur­chase, ac­quire or have pep­per spray, shall on­ly use it in self-de­fence.

The pro­posed law states there is a penal­ty for us­ing pep­per spray in the com­mis­sion of a crim­i­nal of­fence is—on sum­ma­ry con­vic­tion—a fine of $250,000 and five year’s jail or on con­vic­tion on in­dict­ment, a fine of $750,000 and 15 years jail.

Those charged with se­ri­ous crimes—of­fences against the per­son, bur­glar­ies, kid­nap­ping, traf­fick­ing, of­fences against a child, tres­pass­ing, do­mes­tic vi­o­lence—or are on bail or or­ders con­cern­ing Do­mes­tic Vi­o­lence is­sues won’t be al­lowed per­mits.

Per­mit hold­ers charged/con­vict­ed for an of­fence shall re­turn the de­vice and per­mit to the po­lice.

Any­one sell­ing/trans­fer­ring pep­per spray to any oth­er per­son who doesn’t hold or isn’t ex­empt from hold­ing ei­ther per­mit is li­able on sum­ma­ry con­vic­tion to fine of $550,000 and five years jail or on con­vic­tion on in­dict­ment to fine of $750,000 and 15 years jail.

Those car­ry­ing the de­vice must have the per­mit on them. De­vices must be stored out of reach of chil­dren. There’s a $100,000 fine and six months jail for non–com­pli­ance.

If a per­mit or de­vice is lost/stolen it must be re­port­ed to the po­lice. If it is found by some­one, they must de­liv­er it to a po­lice sta­tion.

Apart from Op­po­si­tion calls for the bill, the pre­sen­ta­tion comes as the Can­dle­light Move­ment—led by Phillip Alexan­der, In­shan Ish­mael and Ian Al­leyne—got 128,520 sig­na­tures on an an­ti-vi­o­lence pe­ti­tion. This was cir­cu­lat­ed af­ter Bharatt’s mur­der.