Dur­ing a news con­fer­ence on Mon­day morn­ing, called to ex­plain the procla­ma­tion of a State of Emer­gency (SoE) in T&T, act­ing At­tor­ney Gen­er­al Stu­art Young linked the shoot­ing death on Sat­ur­day af­ter­noon of Trevor Williams, who has been de­scribed as the body­guard of a pri­or­i­ty of­fend­er, to the ex­e­cu­tion-style killing of five men at Priz­gar Lands, Laven­tille, on Sun­day night.

Williams was shot right out­side the Besson St Po­lice Sta­tion in east Port-of-Spain. He had ac­com­pa­nied a man Mr Young de­scribed as be­ing “well known to the law en­force­ment agen­cies of Trinidad and To­ba­go,” who es­caped the at­tempt on his life.

“All in­tel­li­gence and the in­for­ma­tion pro­vid­ed to us by the Trinidad and To­ba­go Po­lice Ser­vice is that this was a reprisal shoot­ing and that there can be ex­pect­ed height­ened reprisal ac­tiv­i­ties by the crim­i­nal el­e­ments, in and around cer­tain places in Trinidad and To­ba­go, that took us out of what we can con­sid­er the norm,” Young said.

Mr Young pre­sent­ed a co­gent and com­pelling ar­gu­ment on Mon­day that an SoE was war­rant­ed be­cause fol­low­ing the two dead­ly in­ci­dents, crim­i­nal gangs were like­ly “to im­me­di­ate­ly in­crease their brazen acts of vi­o­lence in reprisal shoot­ings on a scale so ex­ten­sive that it threat­ens per­sons and will en­dan­ger pub­lic safe­ty.”

On Tues­day night, on the cusp of the New Year, young at­tor­ney Ran­dall Hec­tor was walk­ing to his car af­ter at­tend­ing a Sev­en Day Ad­ven­tist church ser­vice in Port-of-Spain, when he was gunned down in what can be ac­cu­rate­ly de­scribed as “a brazen act of vi­o­lence.”

It has been re­port­ed that Mr Hec­tor, who had es­tab­lished his own cham­bers, had ac­cept­ed a brief from the Di­rec­tor of Pub­lic Pros­e­cu­tions to serve as a spe­cial pros­e­cu­tor in the State’s case against a gang leader.

The ques­tion that aris­es is whether the killing of the at­tor­ney was an as­pect of the “height­ened reprisal ac­tiv­i­ties by the crim­i­nal el­e­ments,” to which Mr Young re­ferred at Mon­day’s news con­fer­ence, or if there is an­oth­er ex­pla­na­tion. What­ev­er the rea­son, the fact and man­ner of Mr Hec­tor’s killing are like­ly to have a chill­ing ef­fect on the State’s pros­e­cu­tion of known gang lead­ers who are ap­pre­hend­ed dur­ing the SoE or af­ter. In that re­gard, the par­al­lel with the shoot­ing death of Dana See­ta­hal in May 2014 is stark.

When the brazen­ness of Mr Hec­tor’s killing, on the day af­ter the SoE was de­clared, is added to Sat­ur­day’s mur­der just out­side a po­lice sta­tion in the cap­i­tal city, the is­sue that T&T’s law en­force­ment in­fra­struc­ture must con­sid­er is whether the gang­sters are like­ly to be bri­dled by the cur­rent se­cu­ri­ty lock­down.

While three days of the SoE may not pro­vide enough time for a prop­er as­sess­ment of the im­pact of the mea­sure, that is some­thing the au­thor­i­ties have to keep con­stant­ly un­der re­view and on which they must be pre­pared to demon­strate some flex­i­bil­i­ty.

On bal­ance, many busi­ness­peo­ple and busi­ness groups give the Gov­ern­ment the ben­e­fit of the doubt for not in­clud­ing a cur­few in the SoE. But if the SoE was de­clared to pre­vent open war­fare and/or reprisal killings be­tween ri­val gangs, and these con­tin­ue, the ad­min­is­tra­tion’s cur­few pol­i­cy would need to be re­vised.

Fi­nal­ly, if the Gov­ern­ment be­lieves that the tech­no­log­i­cal and sur­veil­lance ca­pa­bil­i­ties of the po­lice and army are not fit for pur­pose, the coun­try’s lead­ers must not be ashamed to re­quest ex­ter­nal as­sis­tance.