The Con­gress of the Peo­ple (COP) has ex­pressed sup­port for the Gov­ern­ment’s de­c­la­ra­tion of a State of Emer­gency, say­ing the mea­sure al­lows broad­er crime re­duc­tion strate­gies to take root while pro­tect­ing law-abid­ing cit­i­zens.

In a me­dia re­lease is­sued to­day, the par­ty said crime in Trinidad and To­ba­go has reached a lev­el that re­quires de­ci­sive and sys­temic in­ter­ven­tion. It ar­gued that while long-term so­lu­tions must ad­dress the root caus­es of crim­i­nal ac­tiv­i­ty, sev­er­al short-term ac­tions can pro­duce re­sults in the im­me­di­ate to medi­um term.

The frame­work, pre­sent­ed by Im­ran Ali, out­lines ten short-term mea­sures aimed at restor­ing pub­lic con­fi­dence, strength­en­ing law en­force­ment ac­count­abil­i­ty, mod­ernising sur­veil­lance sys­tems, clos­ing leg­isla­tive loop­holes and ad­dress­ing weak­ness­es in bor­der se­cu­ri­ty and the jus­tice sys­tem.