Maroc - NEWSDAY.CO.TT - A la Une - 03/Jan 09:13

State of confusion

THE DECLARATION of a state of emergency (SoE) hasn’t impressed anyone other than party sycophants and some business groups – one and the same. It certainly hasn’t sowed fear in the hearts of our killer elite. Murders continued unabated, even as the measure was being announced. Hit squads pressed forward with their slate of to-dos even as ordinary citizens wondered what to do – what would this SoE look like on the ground? As 2024 bled into 2025, assassins furthered their dark work, unbound by the boundaries of time and unbothered by this administration’s knee-jerk awakening. In broad daylight, in front of others, unmasked and undeterred – murderous momentum won’t yield to political optics. The Commissioner of Police (CoP) trilled sweetly about 46 people being held on the first day of the SoE. There are no details on whether any detainees were charged with specific crimes. Erla Harewood-Christopher only offered, “The public is assured that the TTPS is working on intelligence received and would have (sic) made those arrests based on the intelligence.” Again, optics. It’s doubtful we’ll hear about the gradual release of all detainees in this bit of performative policing. This SoE won’t deliver as conceived and sold. It isn’t supposed to be a crime-fighting tool per se, but a pause button to halt bloodshed while a strategy is rolled out to remove habitual violent offenders from the landscape. We know there’s no strategy, because if there was one a state of emergency wouldn’t have been declared in the first place. As with everything this administration touches, the invocation of emergency powers was replete with chaos and confusion. The whole affair felt like a lime thrown together at the last minute. Invitations went out at the strangest hour; it was so conspicuously peculiar many thought it was fake. The people you thought would show up didn’t. Those who did came with no drinks or cutters (regulations). The reason for the SoE, which was strenuously resisted even as the heat on the street and in our homes increased steadily over the last nine years, was an expected surge in gang violence. That story was difficult to digest, given that mass gang casualties and outright warring along with civilian collateral damage happened several times over the past few years. Gang clashes have played out in the heart of Port of Spain on multiple occasions; it’s now our natural state. The proliferation of high-powered weapons among roving criminal platoons isn’t a new development either. Those guns have been pouring into our porous borders and scannerless ports for years. Interestingly, waves of home invasions resulting in the killings of innocent civilians appear not to have been suitably troubling to trigger this extreme response from the state. One senior police officer several months ago denied there was any spate of home invasions. The only variables that have changed are the historic murder toll, the deepening unpopularity of the government and the onset of an election year. At the hastily called news conference, the acting AG talked about additional powers for the police. Several attorneys have pointed out that existing laws (anti-gang legislation, etc) already arm the police with sweeping powers to target criminals. Stuart Young spoke about increased patrolling of the borders. An SoE wasn’t required to do what many have been clamouring for but for which this administration had an infinite supply of excuses – innumerable ports of illegal entry, stretched resources, the UNC, the overflow of guns from the US…the UNC. How does a state of emergency change those limiting conditions? The roadblocks, speed traps, joint army patrols heralded now as part of emergency measures are hackneyed tactics the police fall back on every time there’s a public outcry about murders. No SoE was needed for any of that. Moreover, the deployment of emergency powers without a curfew or some species of lockdown, the likes of which we saw during the pandemic, seems pointless. I’ve said it elsewhere, but it bears repeating – we cannot expect salvation to come from the source of our damnation. The Minister of National Security retains his post even as we’re drowning in the bloody evidence of his failure. The contract of the CoP was extended again in May last year, notwithstanding her own failures to deliver on promises of reducing violent crime. These failures and their steep costs are products of political considerations. Moreover, the anarchy that has taken over the country is the evolutionary outcome of decades of playing the fool with criminality. It’s now a self-sustaining force that can’t be contained by the incompetence, political complicity and defiant kakistocracy that engineered it. The post State of confusion appeared first on Trinidad and Tobago Newsday.