The Law As­so­ci­a­tion of Trinidad and To­ba­go (LATT) is hop­ing that the key ob­jec­tives of the cur­rent State of Emer­gency (SoE) are met and “re­alised in the short­est pos­si­ble time”, as law-abid­ing cit­i­zens’ civ­il rights and lib­er­ties can be neg­a­tive­ly af­fect­ed dur­ing such a cru­cial pe­ri­od.

In a state­ment is­sued to­day on the mat­ter, the LATT ob­served there is great po­ten­tial for civ­il lib­er­ties in­fringe­ments.

“The Gov­ern­ment and the Po­lice, with the de­c­la­ra­tion of a SoE, are now per­mit­ted, in treat­ing with the prob­lem, to act in a man­ner which is not con­sis­tent with the fun­da­men­tal rights and free­doms af­ford­ed to the cit­i­zen­ry un­der Part 1 of the Con­sti­tu­tion,” the Law As­so­ci­a­tion not­ed.

“Ne­far­i­ous gang vi­o­lence may be the tar­get of the pre­scribed treat­ment,” the LATT said, “but the cor­pus of our cit­i­zen­ry must al­so en­dure the treat­ment.”

On De­cem­ber 30, 2024, the State of Emer­gency (SoE) was de­clared in Trinidad and To­ba­go in ac­cor­dance with Part III of the Con­sti­tu­tion.

Point­ing out that T&T’s mur­der toll for 2024 “reached a his­toric high”, LATT notes the ra­tio­nale be­hind the SoE de­c­la­ra­tion was “that ac­tion has been tak­en, or is im­me­di­ate­ly threat­ened, by any per­son, of such a na­ture and on so ex­ten­sive a scale, as to be like­ly to en­dan­ger the pub­lic safe­ty or to de­prive the com­mu­ni­ty or any sub­stan­tial por­tion of the com­mu­ni­ty of sup­plies or ser­vices es­sen­tial to life.”

LATT points to in­stances of gang-re­lat­ed vi­o­lence—"a di­rect threat to the safe­ty of the cit­i­zen­ry of this coun­try”—which it be­lieves would have heav­i­ly in­flu­enced the de­ci­sion to call an SoE at this time.

“Re­ports of com­mu­ni­ties op­er­at­ing un­der the ef­fec­tive con­trol of cer­tain gangs have been wide­spread,” LATT states. “There are wide­spread re­ports of mem­bers of the pub­lic be­ing re­quired to seek the ‘per­mis­sion’ of gang ‘sol­diers’ be­fore en­ter­ing cer­tain com­mu­ni­ties. Ser­vice providers are re­port­ed to be un­able to ply their trade in cer­tain com­mu­ni­ties with­out pay­ing com­pen­sa­tion to those who rep­re­sent them­selves as be­ing ‘in charge’ of those com­mu­ni­ties.”

“Pub­lic util­i­ties re­port­ed­ly re­main un-ser­viced be­cause re­pair­men are fear­ful of falling prey to ex­tor­tion and vi­o­lence,” the LATT re­lease re­count­ed. “Even the na­tion’s health work­ers, as they strug­gle to as­sist par­tic­i­pants in and vic­tims of vi­o­lent gang ac­tiv­i­ty, have been caught in the cross­fire be­tween war­ring gang fac­tions.”

“The … ut­ter­ances made by the Ho­n­ourable Act­ing At­tor­ney Gen­er­al of Trinidad and To­ba­go and the Ho­n­ourable Min­is­ter of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty when the SOE was de­clared, sug­gest­ed that the Gov­ern­ment and the Po­lice had rea­son to be­lieve that re­cent gang-re­lat­ed mur­ders were like­ly to pro­voke re­tal­ia­to­ry ac­tion,” LATT said, “and that the de­c­la­ra­tion of a SOE was nec­es­sary to treat with a feared fur­ther es­ca­la­tion in vi­o­lent ac­tiv­i­ty.”

It added: “This, of course, is a judg­ment call that is the Gov­ern­ment’s to make.”

The Law As­so­ci­a­tion is among the lat­est of sev­er­al spe­cial in­ter­est groups to ex­press its cau­tious sup­port for the SoE.