As the Joshua Sama­roo-Ka­ia Sealy po­lice-in­volved shoot­ing in­ves­ti­ga­tion per­sists, the ma­jor fo­cus over the past week has been on pro­test­ers who per­ceive there to be un­fair treat­ment in the mat­ter, with a manslaugh­ter charge cur­rent­ly be­ing lev­elled against Sealy.

How­ev­er, there is a grow­ing sense of un­ease aris­ing in the wider so­ci­ety that al­so needs to be frontal­ly ad­dressed.

Yet, the build­ing ten­sion is not be­ing giv­en the kind of at­ten­tion that it de­serves, al­though it seems to be out­side of what has be­come the norm for two decades or more.

The re­al­i­ty is that with­in its first year in of­fice, the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress-led ad­min­is­tra­tion has de­clared two State of Emer­gen­cies (SoE) and may cur­rent­ly be weigh­ing the pos­si­bil­i­ty of a third, af­ter it was de­nied the op­por­tu­ni­ty to es­tab­lish Zones of Spe­cial Op­er­a­tions (ZOSO) in Par­lia­ment.

The ZOSOs formed part of yet an­oth­er at­tempt to deal with ram­pant crim­i­nal­i­ty. How­ev­er, it has be­come ob­vi­ous that af­ter the pe­ri­od of calm dur­ing the first SoE, the crim­i­nal el­e­ment does not seem in­tim­i­dat­ed, as ev­i­denced by the bla­tant dis­re­gard for law and or­der and brazen na­ture of crimes oc­cur­ring dai­ly in our so­ci­ety de­spite the ex­is­tence of the SoE.

The above is fu­elling the cur­rent un­ease and the need for a pro­tec­tive shield against threats to peace and se­cu­ri­ty. Such threats, though not new giv­en Trinidad and To­ba­go’s his­to­ry of trade union and po­lit­i­cal protests, go­ing back more than 50 years, have hith­er­to not been ac­com­pa­nied by a feel­ing that the wider na­tion was un­der threat – 1990 be­ing the ex­cep­tion.

Fur­ther, alarm has been raised by Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar of “sick and evil sup­port for calls for vi­o­lent gangs to unite to at­tack law en­force­ment of­fi­cers and law-abid­ing cit­i­zens.” The ex­pec­ta­tion is that the Prime Min­is­ter would not make that kind of state­ment with­out there be­ing a ba­sis for it.

Al­so, in­di­ca­tions of an emerg­ing crim­i­nal­i­ty be­yond the norm are ev­i­denced in the es­tab­lish­ment by the Trinidad and To­ba­go Po­lice Ser­vice of 15 no-protest zones across the coun­try.

Protests with­in those zones and demon­stra­tions with­in 500 me­tres of sen­si­tive State in­sti­tu­tions have been banned - the im­pli­ca­tion of such a de­c­la­ra­tion be­ing that there is con­cern that there are el­e­ments in the so­ci­ety who may seek to en­gage in some form of vi­o­lence, es­pe­cial­ly against law-keep­ing in­sti­tu­tions. Based on this lat­est move, it is rea­son­able to sur­mise that the State sees the need for pro­tec­tion from those so mind­ed and dis­posed to car­ry­ing out the vi­o­lence.

An­oth­er rea­son­able con­clu­sion which can be drawn from all of the warn­ings is that there is a mea­sure of con­cern from the Gov­ern­ment and the se­cu­ri­ty es­tab­lish­ment, es­pe­cial­ly the po­lice, trig­ger­ing in­creased pro­tec­tion against the pos­si­bil­i­ty of a spate of ris­ing vi­o­lence.

As in­di­cat­ed in the “no-protest zones” de­ter­mi­na­tion, the threat ex­ists against sen­si­tive State in­sti­tu­tions - that is, if they are left un­pro­tect­ed against a pos­si­ble ris­ing cur­rent of dis­or­der. Prime Min­is­ter Per­sad-Bisses­sar has said that “en­tire com­mu­ni­ties can­not walk their streets safe­ly be­cause they have been ter­rorised and bled out by gangs.”

The pop­u­la­tion, there­fore, will be de­pend­ing on the PM’s as­sur­ance that Gov­ern­ment and law en­force­ment will stand firm­ly in de­fence of law-abid­ing cit­i­zens as deep­er con­cerns are be­ing raised about na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty and pro­tec­tion for cit­i­zens.