Akash Sama­roo

Se­nior Re­porter

akash.sama­roo@cnc3.co.tt

Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley says some po­lice of­fi­cers are now pre­tend­ing to close sta­tions to hide from crim­i­nals.

He made the com­ment yes­ter­day as the Par­lia­ment de­bat­ed the ra­tio­nale for the State of Emer­gency (SoE) and a fur­ther three-month ex­ten­sion to it in sep­a­rate mo­tions.

The Prime Min­is­ter said crim­i­nals had be­come so brazen that they be­lieve they can, with­out fear, shoot and kill even the po­lice.

“So when of­fi­cers are in the po­lice sta­tions, it has come to my at­ten­tion, in some dis­tricts, in some in­stances, po­lice of­fi­cers whose job it is to pro­tect us and se­cure us, in some dis­tricts at night, are so afraid of the crim­i­nals that they close the po­lice sta­tion door, turn off the light, and be in­side there hop­ing that the crim­i­nals don’t come at them,” Row­ley re­vealed.

He added, “When cit­i­zens iden­ti­fy­ing them­selves as law break­ers choose as their place of at­tack to be in front of a po­lice sta­tion in­side the city, and to car­ry out an at­tack us­ing the most so­phis­ti­cat­ed killing weapons, it tells you they have no re­gard for law en­force­ment in our so­ci­ety.”

He said this has led to the be­lief that the reg­u­lar laws are not suf­fi­cient to treat with the harsh­ness of the crim­i­nal el­e­ment.

Con­tact­ed for a re­sponse on the PM’s claim, T&T Po­lice Ser­vice So­cial and Wel­fare As­so­ci­a­tion pres­i­dent Gideon Dick­son said he had no re­ports of any such in­ci­dent, adding the mat­ter would have to be ad­dressed by Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice Er­la Hare­wood-Christo­pher or the deputy com­mis­sion­ers.

Ef­forts to reach Hare­wood-Christo­pher, DCP Ju­nior Ben­jamin for com­ment were un­suc­cess­ful.

The Prime Min­is­ter al­so lament­ed the dif­fi­cul­ty his Gov­ern­ment has faced in deal­ing with mur­ders.

“The bot­tom line is this so­ci­ety has been un­der at­tack from a crim­i­nal el­e­ment which we have not been able to sup­press,” Row­ley said.

He ac­knowl­edged, how­ev­er, that some peo­ple be­lieve solv­ing crime is a straight­for­ward task.

“I know there are some peo­ple who be­lieve this is easy to get rid of but if it was so easy to get rid of, we would have got­ten rid of it al­ready, but in­stead, what we are see­ing is the can­cer is spread­ing,” the Prime Min­is­ter said.

He re­it­er­at­ed that the rea­sons for the SoE were out­lined in the Pres­i­dent’s de­c­la­ra­tion.

Those were over 60 mur­ders in De­cem­ber and to deal with the threat to pub­lic safe­ty from gangs’ reprisal at­tacks.

“At that point, the Gov­ern­ment, what­ev­er re­luc­tance we had with re­spect to a SoE, we had to in­ter­vene, the Gov­ern­ment had to in­ter­vene,” the Prime Min­is­ter said.

Speak­ing again dur­ing the mo­tion to ex­tend the SoE, which was de­clared on De­cem­ber 30, 2024, Dr Row­ley said the first 15 days were not enough to have a gen­uine im­pact.

“It is too ear­ly to say that it has been suc­cess­ful, so we close the door af­ter 15 days. We be­lieve that we will put our of­fi­cers out there to do more. We have giv­en them ad­di­tion­al sup­port from the De­fence Force, we are cov­er­ing more ground, we are spend­ing more time in­ter­ro­gat­ing sus­pects, we are spend­ing more time and need to spend more time con­vert­ing in­for­ma­tion to ev­i­dence and we are, in fact, spend­ing time hope­ful­ly de­tain­ing the dead­ly to re­duce their abil­i­ty to rain death and de­struc­tion on the in­no­cent and the law-abid­ing. Madame Speak­er, we need more time,” he said.

The PM al­so un­der­scored that at no time did he ever say he was nev­er go­ing to de­clare a SoE.

He, how­ev­er, again said a cur­few is not be­ing ex­plored at this time.

Row­ley al­so de­fend­ed crit­i­cism from Op­po­si­tion Leader Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar that he is re­spon­si­ble for the deaths of over 5,000 peo­ple as leader of Gov­ern­ment for al­most a decade.

He said it is easy to be crit­i­cal but there has to be log­ic. He, there­fore, sought to flip the script on her.

“If one takes that state­ment log­i­cal­ly, then I would say that the MP for Siparia is re­spon­si­ble for 2,435 deaths,” he said.

He said it is al­so not so sim­ple to ac­cuse Gov­ern­ment of tak­ing too long to utilise an SoE.

Dur­ing the de­bate, Per­sad-Bisses­sar had said call­ing a SoE could have saved hun­dreds of lives.

“That is con­jec­ture be­cause no­body knows what lives would have been saved and when you look at the num­bers, the SoE of 2011 did not put an end to the be­hav­iour of the crim­i­nals,” the Prime Min­is­ter said in re­sponse to Per­sad-Bisses­sar’s sug­ges­tion.

Mean­while, En­er­gy Min­is­ter and prime min­is­ter-in-wait­ing, Stu­art Young, ve­he­ment­ly de­nied an ear­li­er claim by Op­po­si­tion MP Sad­dam Ho­sein that all the SoE brings is al­ready built in­to reg­u­lar laws and the reg­u­la­tions were al­most a copy of the laws used by the Peo­ple’s Part­ner­ship dur­ing the 2011 SoE. Point­ing out that this SoE is tar­get­ed against spe­cif­ic of­fend­ers and does not lim­it free move­ment or free­dom of speech, Young said, “When some­one reads the reg­u­la­tions, you will see in ac­cor­dance with emer­gency pow­ers where we are sus­pend­ing cer­tain con­sti­tu­tion­al rights, the reg­u­la­tions are pro­vid­ing for the po­lice to have wider, quick­er use of pow­ers. Search and stop, search and seize with­out war­rants.

“So do not come here and try to re­strict the abil­i­ty of the po­lice in very lim­it­ed cir­cum­stances, un­der a last re­sort SoE, from be­ing giv­en the pow­ers to do what they need to do to make all of us law-abid­ing cit­i­zens that much safer. These pow­ers do not ex­ist in the ex­ist­ing leg­is­la­tion, the Firearms Act, the An­ti-Gang Act etc...”

The ex­ten­sion of the SoE was even­tu­al­ly agreed to by a unan­i­mous vote af­ter the de­bate last evening.