Jensen La Vende

Se­nior Re­porter

jensen.lavende@guardian.co.tt

As the 16-week State of Emer­gency (SoE) comes to an end at mid­night, act­ing Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Ju­nior Ben­jamin has de­scribed it as a win against spi­ralling crime.

He, how­ev­er, ad­mit­ted that the re­sults could have been more im­pact­ful if they had the re­sources they need­ed. Ben­jamin said they had to deal with a lack of ve­hi­cles and a man­pow­er short­age.

Speak­ing with Guardian Me­dia yes­ter­day, Ben­jamin said, "There is much more that I think could have been ac­com­plished if we had the nec­es­sary re­sources in terms of ve­hi­cles.

"The chal­lenges that we found in the whole thing is that in the midst of all that is re­sources has al­ways been a chal­lenge."

Now that the State of Emer­gency has end­ed, Ben­jamin is con­cerned that some of­fi­cers who were re­called from leave to han­dle the in­creased de­mand dur­ing the SOE will now have to re­turn to their reg­u­lar leave.

The SoE was de­clared on De­cem­ber 30 last year and was trig­gered af­ter gun­men at­tempt­ed to kill Calvin "Sixx Dan" Lee out­side the Besson Street Po­lice Sta­tion.

Dur­ing the at­tack on Lee, Trevor Williams, 34, who along with oth­ers ac­com­pa­nied Lee to sign his bail book at the sta­tion, was killed. The day af­ter, in what po­lice said was a reprisal at­tack, five men: Ryan Lessey, 23, of Priz­gar Lands; Der­ron Cal­liste, 35, of Priz­gar Lands; Cleon Lu­g­in, 37, of Priz­gar Lands; Kam­bon Omowale, 39, of Quintin Trace, Priz­gar Lands; and Gareth Smart, of Thoma­sine Street, Laven­tille were mur­dered.

Po­lice said there were con­cerns about in­creased vi­o­lent gang ac­tiv­i­ties as a re­sult trig­ger­ing the State to de­clare an SoE.

One day af­ter the SoE was de­clared, spe­cial state pros­e­cu­tor and for­mer at­tor­ney with the Strate­gic Ser­vices Agency (SSA) Ran­dall Hec­tor was gunned down on his way home from church.

Hec­tor, 43, was killed in front of his wife and chil­dren af­ter leav­ing the Sev­enth-day Ad­ven­tist Church at Stan­more Av­enue. A Nis­san B-15 car and a black SUV pulled up and two gun­men got out and shot him. He was tak­en to the Port of Spain Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tal, where he lat­er died.

Ac­cord­ing to po­lice da­ta, there were 5,092 op­er­a­tions re­sult­ing in 3,926 ar­rests, in­clud­ing 50 peo­ple de­tained un­der the Pre­ven­tive De­ten­tion Or­der. There were 35,522 search­es and 4,588 traf­fic stops, iden­ti­fy­ing 17,245 traf­fic of­fences.

Over­all po­lice seized 195 firearms and 4,080 rounds of as­sort­ed am­mu­ni­tion and seized 1,752.04 kilo­grammes of mar­i­jua­na, 185.95 kg of co­caine, 89.83 grammes of ec­sta­sy, and less than 100 grammes of as­sort­ed drugs in­clud­ing Xanax, MD­MA (mol­ly), and crys­tal metham­phet­a­mines.

Ben­jamin said as of Fri­day there were 112 mur­ders com­pared to 160 for the same pe­ri­od last year and 164 the pre­vi­ous year.

There was al­so a de­cline in wound­ings and shoot­ings from 206 last year to 137 this year with rob­beries drop­ping from 708 last year to 433 this year.

Min­is­ter in the Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­istry Kei­th Scot­land as­sured that the ef­forts of the se­cu­ri­ty ap­pa­ra­tus will be con­tin­u­ing post SoE, stress­ing that it was a suc­cess.

Crim­i­nol­o­gist: More da­ta need­ed to judge im­pact

Crim­i­nol­o­gist Dr Mal­isa Nep­tune-Fi­garo said she was not able to as­sess the suc­cess of the SoE with­out analysing the da­ta and iden­ti­fy­ing the caus­es for the de­crease in crimes and specif­i­cal­ly the types of mur­ders that took place to give a prop­er analy­sis.

Fi­garo said there were some eas­i­ly iden­ti­fi­able gains such as po­lice vis­i­bil­i­ty which un­der­scored an ef­fort to ad­dress crime. Whether this will be main­tained is an­oth­er ques­tion.

“There's so much more to go, so much more poli­cies and pro­grammes and dif­fer­ent types of ini­tia­tives to im­ple­ment to ac­tu­al­ly get the re­sults that we need. So, this is just a start­ing point, but I can't say de­fin­i­tive­ly, be­cause I have no sta­tis­tics in front of me, what kind of crimes were af­fect­ed and how ef­fec­tive it was in terms of the num­bers of se­ri­ous crimes that were be­ing com­mit­ted from last year, this time pe­ri­od, to this year, this time pe­ri­od.”

Gary: Pub­lic felt safer

For­mer po­lice com­mis­sion­er Gary Grif­fith ques­tioned if the ends jus­ti­fied the means. He said if the in­tend­ed re­sult was a sense of safe­ty, then it was a suc­cess.

“As it is at this time there is a de­gree of per­sons feel­ing much safer. So if the ends jus­ti­fy the means, maybe, be­cause peo­ple felt safer. How­ev­er, I have al­ways stat­ed that an SoE should not be used as a crime-fight­ing tool. The things done dur­ing the SoE could have eas­i­ly been done with­out an SoE.”

Grif­fith said the in­ter­na­tion­al bench­mark was a na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty alert state with a se­cu­ri­ty colour-cod­ed sys­tem which, based on the threat as­sess­ment, can be ad­just­ed to re­spond to the need.

Heer­ah: Main­tain SoE gains

Re­gion­al se­cu­ri­ty ex­pert Garvin Heer­ah said that based on sta­tis­tics com­ing out of the na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty, there were suc­cess­es achieved dur­ing the state of emer­gency. He says go­ing for­ward, the next step will be main­tain­ing the gains achieved, some­thing both Scot­land and Ben­jamin as­sured will be done.

Heer­ah added that spe­cial at­ten­tion must be placed on the pris­ons fol­low­ing the fa­tal stab­bing of Brent Bap­tiste last week Sat­ur­day.

Jayan­ti: It failed

Op­po­si­tion shad­ow na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty min­is­ter Jayan­ti Lutch­me­di­al-Ram­di­al de­clared that the SoE failed, high­light­ing the 112 mur­ders this year and oth­er se­ri­ous crimes that took place dur­ing what should have been a height­ened se­cu­ri­ty pe­ri­od.