Trinidad and Tobago Triggers State of Emergency After Wave of Gang Violence

A government building in Port-of-Spain, Trinidad and Tobago, on Aug. 20, 2024. Ash Allen, AP

A record number of murders caused by a rise in gang violence has led the Caribbean nation of Trinidad and Tobago to declare a state of emergency.

The Dec. 30, 2024, declaration followed a weekend during which five men were gunned down in what is believed to be a reprisal shooting for a murder outside a police station in the capital, Port of Spain, the previous day.

National Security Minister Fitzgerald Hinds announcing the state of emergency at a press conference, said, “There is no doubt in my mind that we are dealing with an epidemic.”

Hinds said there had been a record 623 homicides in 2024, 263 of which were linked to tensions between rival gangs.

The former British colony has a population of 1.5 million. The UK, which has a population of 68 million, recorded 653 homicides between April 2023 and March 2024.

Police will now have stronger powers to conduct searches, arrest people without a warrant, and detain suspects for up to 48 hours. The state of emergency does not include a curfew.

The southernmost point of Trinidad is only seven miles from the coast of Venezuela, and in recent years, both legal and illegal immigrants from Venezuela have moved to the twin-island nation.

Last month, after witnesses said 69-year-old Winston Thomas had been abducted, robbed, and stabbed to death by a Spanish-speaking gang, the government accused opposition leader Kamla Persad-Bissessar of mimicking U.S. President-elect Donald Trump with some of her statements about the crime problem in the country.

In a statement at the time, the Ministry of National Security said of Persad-Bissessar, “Her call for deportations of Venezuelan migrants, legal or illegal, following this unfortunate incident, generalizes and ’scapegoats’ an entire group.”

An Anti-Gang Act introduced in 2011 banned gangs and made it a criminal offense to be part of a gang.

The act was amended in 2021, and the Trinidad & Tobago Guardian reported that then-National Security Minister Stuart Young said at the time that it was necessary to prevent gang members from threatening contractors and forcing people out of their homes.

Young, now the acting attorney general, said there was a great deal of concern about “increased and heightened brazen acts of criminal activity” by armed gangs.

“The criminal gangs via the use of the high-powered assault weapons and other illegal firearms in areas of Trinidad and possibly Tobago are likely to immediately increase their brazen acts of violence in reprisal shootings on a scale so extensive that it threatens persons and will endanger public safety,” he said.

‘Timing Is Curious’

Emir Crowne, a barrister in Trinidad, told The Epoch Times: “The state of emergency is a draconian move by the government. If a state of emergency is now necessary, it means that the Anti-Gang Act was not the panacea it was touted to be.”

He said law and order had deteriorated since 1999, when gang leader Dole Chadee and eight of his men were executed for the murder of four members of the Baboolal family five years prior.

“The timing is curious,” Crowne said. “Is the government hoping that a temporary reduction in crime or some token arrests would sufficiently distract the voting population from the ever-deteriorating crime situation over the past decade?”

Trinidad and Tobago retains the death penalty but has not executed anyone in the past 25 years.

In May 2021, the Trinidadian government introduced a state of emergency during the COVID-19 pandemic, and it lifted the state of emergency six months later.

In 2011, when Persad-Bissessar was prime minister, she instituted a limited state of emergency and curfew in so-called crime hotspots.

Several other parts of the Caribbean have reported record-high homicide rates this year, including the Turks and Caicos Islands and the tiny island of Anguilla.

The Associated Press and Reuters contributed to this report.