The Caribbean republic of Trinidad and Tobago has declared a state of emergency in response to an increase in gang violence over the weekend.
The statement gives police additional powers as they seek to crack down on revenge killings and other gang-related activity.
“Declaring and invoking a state of public emergency is something that is not taken lightly,” Acting Attorney General Stuart Young said at a news conference on Monday.
He explained that information from the Trinidad and Tobago Police Service “dictated and mandated the necessity of this extreme action that we took this morning.”
The state of emergency empowers the country’s police to arrest people “suspected of involvement in illegal activities”. It would also allow law enforcement to “search and enter public and private premises” and suspend bail.
A government statement specified that no curfew would be imposed and the freedom to meet publicly or demonstrate in 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 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 of high-caliber automatic weapons,” Young explained.
Local media described the shooting as an ambush.
A suspected gang leader, Calvin Lee, had arrived at the police station to sign the bail book, but as he and his companion left, the Daily Express reported that gunmen got out of a nearby van and opened fire. .
One person was killed. Lee himself managed to escape. But Young explained that the shooting led to revenge killings between local gangs.
Within 24 hours, he said, six people were gunned down in Laventille, a suburb of Port of Spain. Five of them were killed. Young said further revenge attacks are still expected.
“Increased retaliatory activities by criminal elements in and around certain locations in Trinidad and Tobago can be expected, which immediately warranted us and took us outside of what we might consider the norm,” he explained.
He declined to name specific locations where gang activity may be concentrated.
“But I can say, throughout Trinidad and possibly Tobago, (criminal gangs) are likely to immediately increase their brazen acts of violence in revenge shootings on such a large scale that it threatens people and endangers safety public”.
Young added that the decision to call a state of emergency was partly a result of the high-caliber weapons used in the attacks, which increased the chance of bystander deaths.
He noted the inclusion of AK-47 and AR-15 weapons.
“Over the last month or so, and actually building on that, the government has been concerned about the use of high-powered, illegal firearms – high-caliber firearms including automatic weapons that fortunately are a scourge throughout the Caribbean region,” Young said.
Caribbean countries do not produce their own firearms and many of the weapons used in gang violence are illegally imported.
One source in particular stands out: the United States. It is the largest arms exporter in the world.
In March, the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute found that the US was the source of roughly 42 percent of global arms exports.
A 2017 analysis by the Small Arms Survey also found that the US had the highest number of private guns per capita, with American civilians carrying 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 partnered with 13 Caribbean countries to help stop the illegal firearms trade. Between 2018 and 2022, approximately 7,399 firearms collected from crimes in the region were sent to the US for traceability.
In October, the US Government Accountability Office released a report with its findings. Of all the firearms found and traced during that four-year period, a total of 5,399 — or 73 percent — originated in the US. Several hundred others were of unclear origin.
The proliferation of illegal firearms has been linked to increased violence in the Caribbean. Trinidad and Tobago, for example, has struggled with a record homicide rate.
In December alone, according to the government, there were 61 murders. The country counted 623 total murders so far for 2024.
“Gangs accounted for 263 of them,” said Fitzgerald Hinds MP, the national security minister, during Monday’s press conference.
“So, as a result, we consider that this declaration of public emergency is to deal with criminals and allow law enforcement easier access than usual to them, in light of the crises they have presented to this country.
