Jesse Ramdeo

Se­nior Re­porter

jesse.ramdeo@cnc3.co.tt

Op­po­si­tion MP Kei­th Scot­land is rais­ing fresh con­cerns about the coun­try’s es­ca­lat­ing homi­cide rate, warn­ing that the on­go­ing State of Emer­gency (SoE) has failed to curb se­ri­ous crime.

Speak­ing to re­porters out­side Par­lia­ment yes­ter­day, the for­mer min­is­ter in the Min­istry of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty raised con­cerns as the mur­der toll ap­proached 100, de­spite the ex­tra­or­di­nary mea­sures im­ple­ment­ed by the Gov­ern­ment.

“I’m very con­cerned about the state of crime in the coun­try. Any ob­jec­tive analy­sis can on­ly con­clude that the State of Emer­gency has not been a suc­cess,” Scot­land stat­ed.

He ar­gued that the ad­min­is­tra­tion has not demon­strat­ed a clear or ef­fec­tive strat­e­gy to tack­le vi­o­lent crime, point­ing to what he de­scribed as long­stand­ing sys­temic is­sues that re­main un­re­solved.

“This Gov­ern­ment does not seem to have any re­al plan to re­duce se­ri­ous crime in Trinidad and To­ba­go, and it goes to fun­da­men­tal is­sues that have not been ad­dressed,” he said.

Scot­land ac­knowl­edged that the crime sit­u­a­tion did not emerge overnight, not­ing that 2025 was al­ready a trou­bling year for homi­cides un­der the pre­vi­ous Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment ad­min­is­tra­tion.

How­ev­er, he said the cur­rent Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress Gov­ern­ment had cam­paigned on a promise to re­duce crime, a com­mit­ment he be­lieves has not been ful­filled.

“Now it’s the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress in pow­er, and they guar­an­teed dur­ing the elec­tion that crime would be re­duced, and it’s not be­ing re­duced,” he added.

The Op­po­si­tion MP al­so ex­pressed con­cern about re­ports in­volv­ing mem­bers of the Trinidad and To­ba­go Po­lice Ser­vice, fol­low­ing the re­cent de­ten­tion of two of­fi­cers un­der Pre­ven­ta­tive De­ten­tion Or­ders (PDOs).

He de­scribed the sit­u­a­tion as trou­bling but stressed that on­ly a small mi­nor­i­ty of of­fi­cers are re­spon­si­ble for mis­con­duct.

“It is un­for­tu­nate that a mi­nor­i­ty will tar­nish the name of the gen­er­al­ly hard-work­ing po­lice of­fi­cers that form the ma­jor­i­ty of the po­lice ser­vice,” Scot­land said, draw­ing on his ex­pe­ri­ence over­see­ing po­lice op­er­a­tions dur­ing his tenure in the min­istry.

Of­fer­ing ad­vice to law en­force­ment and the wider pub­lic, Scot­land urged ad­her­ence to the law and pro­fes­sion­al stan­dards.

“My ad­vice to po­lice of­fi­cers, to every­body, is walk the straight line and do not bring your pro­fes­sion, your fam­i­ly, and your name in­to dis­re­pute,” he said.