Re­gion­al se­cu­ri­ty ex­pert Dr Garvin Heer­ah is urg­ing au­thor­i­ties to con­sid­er in­tro­duc­ing cur­fews fol­low­ing the ex­ten­sion of the State of Emer­gency (SoE), ar­gu­ing that stronger mea­sures are need­ed to re­gain con­trol of com­mu­ni­ties and send a clear mes­sage to crim­i­nal el­e­ments.

Speak­ing on CNC3’s The Morn­ing Brew yes­ter­day, Heer­ah said the im­pact of the SoE ap­pears to have di­min­ished, with crim­i­nals con­tin­u­ing to op­er­ate de­spite the ex­tra­or­di­nary pow­ers avail­able to law en­force­ment.

“If we are go­ing to rein­tro­duce this SoE —if we are go­ing to de­bate the ef­fec­tive­ness of hav­ing one—let us con­sid­er, this time, mea­sures such as cur­fews,” Heer­ah said.

“Let’s try to con­trol the sit­u­a­tion a lit­tle more. Let’s try to keep peo­ple off the streets at cer­tain times and re­store law and or­der, par­tic­u­lar­ly in key ar­eas.”

He said au­thor­i­ties should use the SoE to es­tab­lish greater com­mand and con­trol in crime-af­fect­ed com­mu­ni­ties.

“The crim­i­nal is of the opin­ion that they can move as they wish. We have to send a clear mes­sage,” Heer­ah said.

While sup­port­ing en­hanced pow­ers for law en­force­ment, he stressed that the SoE should not be treat­ed as a stand­alone crime-fight­ing tool. In­stead, he said it should form part of a broad­er strat­e­gy with clear­ly de­fined goals and mea­sur­able out­comes.

“The SoE is not a crime-fight­ing tool,” he said.

“We have to in­tro­duce strat­e­gy, es­tab­lish time­lines and work to­wards achiev­ing ob­jec­tives that cit­i­zens can mea­sure.”

He warned that with­out a strate­gic ap­proach, the coun­try risks re­peat­ed­ly ex­tend­ing emer­gency pow­ers with­out ad­dress­ing the root caus­es of crime.

Heer­ah al­so ar­gued that au­thor­i­ties must ex­pand their fo­cus be­yond street-lev­el of­fend­ers and tar­get those op­er­at­ing at the high­est lev­els of crim­i­nal net­works.

Cor­rup­tion, white-col­lar crime and transna­tion­al or­gan­ised crime, he said, re­main ma­jor threats to na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty and should be pri­or­i­ty ar­eas dur­ing any ex­tend­ed SoE.

“We can’t fo­cus on­ly at one lev­el, re­mov­ing cer­tain in­di­vid­u­als from the streets. We need to see high-lev­el in­ves­ti­ga­tions and ar­rests as well. That is nec­es­sary to re­store and sta­bilise the coun­try,”he said.

He al­so raised con­cerns about rogue el­e­ments with­in law en­force­ment, warn­ing that crim­i­nal or­gan­i­sa­tions con­tin­ue to ben­e­fit from in­sid­ers who leak in­for­ma­tion.

“We have of­fi­cers aligned to crime and crim­i­nal­i­ty. Across the sys­tem, there are in­di­vid­u­als who are part of these net­works,” Heer­ah said.

He called for stronger in­ter­nal in­ves­ti­ga­tions and greater re­gion­al co­op­er­a­tion among law en­force­ment agen­cies to ad­dress the is­sue.

Heer­ah ac­knowl­edged that cur­fews or tar­get­ed op­er­a­tions in cer­tain com­mu­ni­ties could trig­ger re­sis­tance. How­ev­er, he said suc­cess would de­pend on ef­fec­tive com­mu­ni­ca­tion and mean­ing­ful pub­lic en­gage­ment.

“The mes­sag­ing has to be read­just­ed. It can­not be ‘us ver­sus them’,” he said.

“It must in­volve the com­mu­ni­ty, be­cause many peo­ple are cry­ing out for safe­ty—for a restora­tion of a sense of se­cu­ri­ty in their neigh­bour­hoods.”

He al­so re­ject­ed sug­ges­tions that Trinidad and To­ba­go should tol­er­ate crim­i­nal economies be­cause of their per­ceived con­tri­bu­tion to eco­nom­ic ac­tiv­i­ty, in­sist­ing that the coun­try’s fu­ture can­not de­pend on il­lic­it wealth.

“We are not go­ing to re­ly on the econ­o­my of the un­der­world to sus­tain our na­tion,” he said.

Heer­ah al­so said an ex­ten­sion should be used not on­ly to sup­press crime but al­so to pur­sue mean­ing­ful re­forms tar­get­ing cor­rup­tion, or­gan­ised crime and the so­cial fac­tors dri­ving young peo­ple in­to crim­i­nal ac­tiv­i­ty.

“SoE—not bad at all. How­ev­er, it must be sup­port­ed by strong re­search and a clear frame­work for achiev­ing de­fined ob­jec­tives.”