The government of Trinidad and Tobago, facing an alarming rise in violence, including retaliatory gang killings, on Monday declared a state of emergency. The measure empowers the military to make arrests and allows the authorities to enter suspects’ homes without warrants and deny them bail.
The state of emergency in the Caribbean country, the first for crime in more than a decade, was announced by the acting attorney general, Stuart Young, at a news conference in Port of Spain, the capital. It comes as the government has been increasingly criticized for failing to stop a wave of gang-related killings. The government reported 623 homicides so far this year in a country of 1.4 million. Last year, the murder rate was just below Haiti’s.
The national security minister, Fitzgerald Hinds, who also attended the news conference, said the killings had become an epidemic and public health concern. The police responded to 33 double, eight triple, four quadruple and one quintuple homicide this year, he added.
No curfew will be set during the state of emergency, nor will people’s movements be restricted, Mr. Young said, unlike during the Covid-19 pandemic, as the government wanted to minimize the effects on economic activity. But people suspected of crimes can be stopped and searched by the police or army soldiers, he added.
The Caribbean nation has struggled with the presence of criminal groups for more than 25 years, but the past decade has seen a surge in the escalation of violence by street gangs, said Alex Papadovassilakis, an investigator for Insight Crime, an organized- crime research group with main offices in Washington and Medellín, Colombia.
Experts estimate that there are 186 gangs with more than 1,750 members in Trinidad and Tobago.
“We’re not talking sophisticated gangs; we’re talking small and deeply territorial street gangs that engaged in mostly street level drug dealing, arms trafficking and other criminal activities,” Mr. Papadovassilakis said in a telephone interview. “They are extremely violent.”
Tit-for-tat killings have also contributed to the death toll, he said. The previous record for the number of homicides was in 2022, he noted. The authorities reported 599 people killed that year.
Two gang-related reprisal killings using high-powered weapons took place last weekend, Mr. Young said. On Saturday, a man was gunned down as he walked out of a police station in the eastern part of Port of Spain. And on Sunday night, six people were shot at in Laventille, outside the capital, with five of them killed.
Mr. Young said the gangs were using AR-15s and AK-47s.
Vernlyn Hernandez, who lives in the north coast village of La Cuevas, said, “The state of emergency should have been called after the New Year.”
Attillah Springer, who runs an organization that works with at-risk youth in Port of Spain, said that while many people across the country were probably relieved that the government took action, others were worried, particularly because the authorities released relatively few details.
“They said there will be no curfew, ‘but we just want to suspend certain parts of the Constitution to address gang warfare and gang membership,’” she said.
“Quite a few people who work in these communities believe that it seems that what this state of emergency is going to do is kill young Black men, and that’s a frightening aspect,” she added.
The measure allows suspects to be held without charge for 48 hours and is aimed at gang members, but innocent people are likely to be swept up, Ms. Springer said.
“There are also hundreds, thousands, of young Black men who will just be going about their business who are going to be potential targets,” she said.
Derek Ramsarooj, a political analyst in Port of Spain, said while residents might welcome the state of emergency if it results in a drop in crime, the results were not likely to last unless the government addressed the societal causes for gang violence.
Countries like Trinidad and Tobago have also seen serious spikes in crime because of their position between cocaine-producing countries in South America and the major consumer country up north, the United States, Mr. Ramsarooj said.
“Our challenge cannot be curbed through a state of emergency,” he said. “A state of emergency may be a bandage on a national sore.”
The situation has been worsened by Trinidad’s proximity to Venezuela, experts say, which allows criminals easy access to high-powered weapons. In April last year, the Caribbean Community of nations held a symposium on crime, and one of the recommendations was to engage the United States government about the guns from American manufacturers that were illegally entering Caribbean countries and fueling violence and gang activities.
A former national security minister and retired police commissioner from the opposition party, Gary Griffith, also said that the state of emergency would not solve rising crime.
He noted that the government now in power had criticized a similar measure tried by the opposing People’s Partnership coalition administration, which lasted 106 days in 2011, saying it reeked of a double standard and hypocrisy. That state of emergency had been limited to a few crime hot spots in the country.
“A state of emergency is and should not be used as a crime-fighting tool,” he said. “It is a stopgap measure.”
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