For­mer Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er and Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Gary Grif­fith has de­scribed the ex­ten­sion of Trinidad and To­ba­go’s State of Emer­gency (SOE) as a clear ad­mis­sion of fail­ure by the coun­try’s law en­force­ment lead­er­ship.

Grif­fith ar­gued that Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar had “no choice” but to pro­long the SOE be­cause of the in­abil­i­ty of the Trinidad and To­ba­go Po­lice Ser­vice (TTPS) hi­er­ar­chy to con­trol crime, de­spite al­ready hav­ing con­sti­tu­tion­al au­thor­i­ty and pow­ers. He con­trast­ed the cur­rent sit­u­a­tion with the pe­ri­od be­tween 2013 and 2015, when the then ad­min­is­tra­tion im­ple­ment­ed a se­ries of ini­tia­tives that, he said, re­duced se­ri­ous crime with­out re­sort­ing to emer­gency pow­ers.

Ac­cord­ing to Grif­fith, mea­sures such as the Com­mu­ni­ty Com­fort Pa­trol, the ac­qui­si­tion of Damen ves­sels, the Rapid Re­sponse Unit, the High­way Pa­trol, and the Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Spe­cial Op­er­a­tions Group con­tributed to the “high­est re­duc­tion in se­ri­ous crime in 31 years.” He high­light­ed the role of the Na­tion­al Op­er­a­tions Cen­tre, which was lat­er shut down, as a key fac­tor in en­sur­ing de­ter­rence, vis­i­bil­i­ty, and rapid re­sponse. Grif­fith not­ed that mur­ders in 2014 were near­ly iden­ti­cal to last year’s fig­ures - achieved with­out an SOE.