KAY-MARIE FLETCH­ER

Se­nior Re­porter

kay-marie.fletch­er@guardian.co.tt

As the coun­try record­ed two more dou­ble mur­ders for the month, the Op­po­si­tion dou­bled down on its claims that the state of emer­gency (SoE) im­ple­ment­ed on De­cem­ber 30 2024, is use­less.

Crim­i­nal de­fence at­tor­ney and UNC can­di­date for To­co-San­gre Grande Wayne Sturge said rogue po­lice of­fi­cers play a cru­cial role in the in­crease in crime. Of­fer­ing a so­lu­tion, he said there needs to be peo­ple with no con­nec­tion to lo­cal po­lice of­fi­cers in charge of root­ing out rogue of­fi­cers.

Sturge al­so claimed that with­in the Pro­fes­sion­al Stan­dards Bu­reau (PSB) of the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice (TTPS) there have been of­fi­cers who alert their col­leagues of in­ves­ti­ga­tions, which he says frus­trates the process.

He be­lieves crime can­not flour­ish with­out the in­volve­ment of the pro­tec­tive ser­vices.

Sturge who spoke at a press brief­ing at UNC head­quar­ters in Ch­agua­nas yes­ter­day, Sturge added: “Whilst most po­lice of­fi­cers are well-in­ten­tioned, hard-work­ing and hon­est, there is an un­ac­cept­able per­centile of po­lice of­fi­cers who are fa­cil­i­tat­ing crim­i­nal con­duct, fa­cil­i­tat­ing crim­i­nal gangs, pro­vid­ing sup­port.”

Al­so speak­ing at the brief­ing was Barataria-San Juan MP Sad­dam Ho­sein who agreed that the SoE has been un­suc­cess­ful in its crime-fight­ing ef­forts thus far.

He said de­spite be­ing giv­en ad­di­tion­al pow­ers un­der the emer­gency pow­ers reg­u­la­tions, the po­lice have yet to ar­rest or charge any­one in con­nec­tion with any of the mur­ders that oc­curred since the SoE went in­to ef­fect.

Ho­sein al­so main­tained that not a lot of ef­fort went in­to plan­ning the SoE on the gov­ern­ment’s part. He said oth­er reg­u­la­tions al­ready in ef­fect give the TTPS cer­tain pow­ers with the same goal of tar­get­ing crim­i­nal el­e­ments, some with even stiffer penal­ties.

The two Op­po­si­tion spokesper­sons re­it­er­at­ed the call for the gov­ern­ment to call the gen­er­al elec­tion now.

To­day is Day 22 of the SoE. There were 19 mur­ders as of yes­ter­day.

Ho­sein said: “A state of emer­gency was de­clared on 30th De­cem­ber and since then we have seen no re­al tan­gi­ble ev­i­dence or suc­cess­es of the state of emer­gency. When we went to the Par­lia­ment to de­bate the ex­ten­sion, the gov­ern­ment could not pro­vide any co­gent, com­pelling ev­i­dence to sug­gest that the state of emer­gency was work­ing.”