With the State of Emer­gency (SoE) sched­uled to end to­day, the coun­try is fi­nal­ly able to ex­hale af­ter months of height­ened se­cu­ri­ty. Yet an un­com­fort­able truth re­mains: the SoE bought time, not trans­for­ma­tion. What hap­pens next will de­ter­mine whether the gains record­ed in 2025 en­dure—or evap­o­rate.

There is no deny­ing that the year-end crime num­bers told a hope­ful sto­ry. Mur­ders fell sharply to about 369, the low­est fig­ure in over a decade and rough­ly a 42 per cent drop com­pared to 2024. There were down­ward trends in oth­er se­ri­ous crimes, with shoot­ings and wound­ings re­duced by about 40 per cent, and rob­beries and break-ins sig­nif­i­cant­ly down.

Much of that progress was at­trib­uted to in­tel­li­gence-dri­ven polic­ing and sus­tained op­er­a­tions against vi­o­lent groups.

The SoE, pro­claimed by Pres­i­dent Chris­tine Kan­ga­loo on Ju­ly 18, was based on ur­gent in­tel­li­gence about a co­or­di­nat­ed crim­i­nal net­work op­er­at­ing with­in the prison sys­tem.

The Trinidad and To­ba­go Po­lice Ser­vice re­port­ed that in­car­cer­at­ed in­di­vid­u­als were or­ches­trat­ing tar­get­ed at­tacks against se­nior po­lice of­fi­cers, ju­di­cial of­fi­cials, DPP staff and prison of­fi­cers. Faced with such an im­me­di­ate and grave threat, the SoE was ar­guably un­avoid­able.

How­ev­er, the start of 2026 was a sober­ing re­minder that emer­gency pow­ers do not elim­i­nate vi­o­lence: they on­ly sup­press it tem­porar­i­ly. The new year opened with mul­ti­ple homi­cides, in­clud­ing at least five mur­ders in the first days of Jan­u­ary in Port-of-Spain and oth­er ar­eas. While the over­all tra­jec­to­ry re­mains down­ward, se­ri­ous in­ci­dents con­tin­ue to scar com­mu­ni­ties, un­der­scor­ing that the un­der­ly­ing dri­vers of crime re­main in­tact.

Chief among those dri­vers are or­gan­ised gangs, firearms and the nar­cotics trade. Struc­tured crim­i­nal net­works, deeply em­bed­ded in cer­tain com­mu­ni­ties and in­sti­tu­tions, can­not be dis­man­tled sole­ly by stop-and-search pow­ers. Nor can they be neu­tralised with­out con­fronting chron­ic weak­ness­es in the jus­tice sys­tem—low de­tec­tion rates, pro­longed court back­logs and a per­sis­tent per­cep­tion of im­puni­ty that erodes pub­lic trust.

This is where the na­tion­al con­ver­sa­tion must now shift. The de­bate over Zones of Spe­cial Op­er­a­tions (ZOSOs), reignit­ed by the Gov­ern­ment’s failed at­tempt to pass en­abling leg­is­la­tion be­fore the SoE ex­pired, ex­posed a deep­er prob­lem: the ab­sence of con­sen­sus on long-term crime so­lu­tions.

Ja­maica’s ex­pe­ri­ence with ZOSOs, as ar­tic­u­lat­ed by its For­eign Af­fairs Min­is­ter Kam­i­na John­son Smith, of­fers lessons worth study­ing—not copy­ing blind­ly, but adapt­ing care­ful­ly. There, tar­get­ed polic­ing was paired with so­cial in­ter­ven­tion, hu­man rights train­ing for of­fi­cers, par­lia­men­tary over­sight, sun­set claus­es and com­mu­ni­ty buy-in. Cru­cial­ly, ZOSOs were treat­ed as one tool in a broad­er ecosys­tem, not a sil­ver bul­let.

The re­jec­tion of the ZOSO bill does not leave the coun­try de­fence­less. As Deputy Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice Ju­nior Ben­jamin not­ed, the TTPS con­tin­ues to op­er­ate with­in the es­tab­lished crime pre­ven­tion, de­tec­tion and con­vic­tion frame­work. But op­ti­mism that 2026 could be one of the safest years on record must be matched with po­lit­i­cal will be­yond the po­lice ser­vice.

In­ter­na­tion­al per­cep­tions, re­in­forced by trav­el ad­vi­sories and un­favourable com­par­isons to high-crime cities, will not change through emer­gency de­c­la­ra­tions alone. Sus­tain­able safe­ty re­quires prison re­form, ju­di­cial ef­fi­cien­cy, po­lice ac­count­abil­i­ty, youth in­ter­ven­tion and so­cial in­vest­ment in com­mu­ni­ties that pro­duce a dis­pro­por­tion­ate share of vi­o­lence.

The SoE may have stead­ied the ship, but steer­ing it to safer wa­ters de­mands more than emer­gency nav­i­ga­tion. Trinidad and To­ba­go can­not gov­ern crime as a per­pet­u­al cri­sis. Long-term so­lu­tions are no longer op­tion­al—they are over­due.