Trinidad and Tobago has declared a state of emergency after a spate of killings over the weekend added to what was already an exceptionally deadly year for the Caribbean nation.
Under emergency powers announced Monday by the office of the Prime Minister Keith Rowley, the police will be able to search people and premises without warrants, and detain suspects for up to 48 hours, in an effort to bring down what the leader has called an “unacceptable high level of violent crime.”
However, there will be no curfew.
The authorization came after gun violence claimed several lives over the weekend, bringing the country’s murder toll for 2024 to 623 – the highest level in police records dating back to 2013.
Trinidad and Tobago, population 1.5 million, already has one of the highest murder rates in the Caribbean, along with Jamaica and Haiti, according to the US Government Accountability Office (GAO), while violent deaths in the region are nearly three times the global average.
And police warn they expect the amount of gang-related violent crime involving powerful assault weapons to increase.
Acting Attorney General Stuart Young told a briefing Monday there had been 61 homicides so far in the month of December alone. These included a shooting Saturday involving a high caliber automatic weapon outside a police station that killed one person and an incident less than 24 hours later that left five dead and one injured in the Port of Spain area.
Minister of National Security Fitzgerald Hinds told the same briefing a further two people had been killed on Friday – one in a gang-related incident, another in a “domestic situation” – and 15 others killed in gun-related incidents since last Monday.
Police were viewing the latest wave of incidents as an “outbreak of gang violence,” Hinds said, adding that the military would assist in enforcing the state of emergency.
Attorney General Young added that the use of high-caliber firearms by criminal gangs had made the recent violence particularly concerning, leading to the state of emergency declaration.
“There is very little chance of survival due to the velocity and the caliber of these weapons. This has been a major concern not only for us here in Trinidad and Tobago, but throughout the whole CARICOM region,” he said, referring to the regional Caribbean Community group of nations.
A significant amount of the country’s violent crime – such as murder, assault and kidnapping – is related to criminal gang activity and narcotics trafficking, according to the US State Department.
In July, the US State Department set its travel advisory for Trinidad and Tobago to Level 3, advising US citizens to reconsider travel due to crime.
“Exercise increased caution in Trinidad and Tobago due to terrorism and kidnapping,” the travel advisory said.
The attorney general said the government was in contact with the US, where many of the high-powered weapons come from, to discuss how to control the situation.
While Caribbean countries do not manufacture firearms, more than 7,000 firearms were recovered from them between 2018 and 2022. Nearly three-quarters of those came from the US, according to GAO.