The aim of the emergency, which grants special powers to the police and army, is to try to break the island’s violent criminal gangs. Most Trinidadians support the measure. “Long overdue”, says Ken Gordon, a businessman who chaired a crime task-force for a former government. The four days preceding the announcement saw 11 killings, in a country of just 1.3m people. The murder rate last year was 36 per 100,000, around seven times that in the United States. Recent drug busts raised fears of more deadly turf battles.
Jamaica, with a worse gang problem, imposed a similar emergency for two months from May 2010. Gunmen in the capital, Kingston, had attacked police stations in support of their leader, Christopher “Dudus” Coke, who was wanted in the United States on drug charges. Police and troops stormed his Tivoli Gardens stronghold, leading to 73 civilian deaths. Mr Coke was arrested a month later, and now awaits trial in New York. A bevy of suspected criminals was detained. The murder rate fell by more than 40%, and has stayed down.
Nobody expects such drama in Trinidad. Two young thugs were shot dead during an armed robbery on August 22nd. But there is no kingpin on the “most wanted” posters. The curfew will doubtless cut the murder rate, but it was slowly coming down anyway. If arsenals of illegal guns are seized and hard-core gangsters are charged and convicted, there will be a longer-term dividend. But that requires intelligence and unusual determination from a police force that is in sullen mood over a pay claim and the appointment of a Canadian as police commissioner last year.
The previous prime minister resisted calls for a state of emergency because he worried this might scare investors when the economy was booming. Now it is struggling to recover from the recession. Mrs Persad-Bissessar reckons that leaving the gangs unchecked would be costlier.
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