Trinidad and Tobago announces state of emergency to combat gang violence | Gun Violence News

The Caribbean Republic of Trinidad and Tobago announced a state of emergency in response to an increase in gang violence over the weekend.

The declaration gives police additional powers as they seek to crack down on revenge killings and other gang-related activity.

“Declaring and declaring a state of public emergency is something that is not taken lightly,” Acting Attorney General Stuart Young said on press conference on Monday.

He explained that information from the Trinidad and Tobago Police Service “dictated and dictated the necessity of this extreme action that we took this morning.”

The state of emergency authorizes the country’s police to arrest people “on suspicion of being involved in illegal activities.” It will also allow police forces to “search and enter public and private premises” and suspend bail.

The government statement specified that a curfew would not be imposed and that the freedom of public assembly or protest at marches would not be hindered.

Young said a spike in violence over the weekend in the capital, Port of Spain, helped prompt the declaration of a state of emergency in the early hours of Monday.

“You will recall that on Saturday, shortly after 3 o’clock in the afternoon outside the police station on Besson Street, there was a shooting from a large caliber automatic weapon,” Young explained.

Local media described the shooting as an ambush.

The suspected gang leader, Calvin Lee, arrived at the police station to sign the bail book, but as he and his entourage left, the Daily Express reported that gunmen got out of a nearby van and opened fire.

One person was killed. Sam Lee managed to escape. But Young explained that the shootings led to revenge killings between local gangs.

Within 24 hours, he said, six people had been shot in Laventille, a suburb of Port of Spain. Five of them were killed. Young said further retaliatory attacks were still expected.

“Increased reprisals can be expected from criminal elements in and around certain places in Trinidad and Tobago who immediately justified us and took us out of what we can consider the norm,” he explained.

He declined to name specific locations where gang activity might be concentrated.

“But I can say, throughout Trinidad and probably Tobago, [criminal gangs] they are likely to immediately increase their brazen acts of violence in retaliation for the shooting on such a large scale that they threaten persons and endanger public safety.”

Young added that the decision to impose a state of emergency was partly a result of the high-caliber weapons used in the attacks, which increased the possibility of bystander deaths.

He noted the inclusion of AK-47 and AR-15 rifles.

“Over the last month or so, and really building on this, the government has been concerned about the use of high-powered, illegal firearms — high-caliber firearms, including automatic weapons that are unfortunately a scourge throughout the Caribbean region,” he said. is Young.

countries of the Caribbean not produce only firearms, and many of the weapons used in gang violence are illegally imported.

One source stands out in particular: United States. It is the largest arms exporter in the world.

In March, the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute found that the US is the source of approximately 42 percent of the world’s arms exports.

And in 2017 analysis from the Small Arms Survey also found that the US has the highest number of private guns per capita, with US civilians owning 40 percent of the world’s firearms.

Weapons from the US have been linked to crimes across the Caribbean, from Haiti and Jamaica to Trinidad and Tobago.

The US has worked with 13 Caribbean countries to help stop the illegal firearms trade. Between 2018 and 2022, an estimated 7,399 firearms recovered from crimes in the region were sent to the US for provenance.

In October, the US Government Accountability Office released a report with its findings. Of all the firearms recovered and tracked during that four-year period, a total of 5,399 — or 73 percent – originally from the USA. A few hundred more had ambiguous origins.

The proliferation of illegal firearms has been linked to an increase in violence in the Caribbean. Trinidad and Tobago, for example, is struggling with record homicide rates.

According to government data, there were 61 murders in December alone. So far, 623 murders have been recorded in the country for 2024.

“Gangs accounted for 263 of them,” Rep. Fitzgerald Hinds, the Homeland Security Secretary, said during a press conference on Monday.

“Consequently, we believe this declaration of emergency is to confront criminals and allow law enforcement easier access to them than usual, in light of the crisis they have presented to this country.”