The Caribbean Republic of Trinidad and Tobago announced Emergency In response to a surge 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 calling for a public emergency is something that cannot be taken lightly,” Acting Attorney General Stuart Young said at a press conference. press conference on monday.

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

The state of emergency allows the country’s police to arrest people “on suspicion of involvement in illegal activities.” It will also allow law enforcement to “search and enter public and private places” and suspend bail.

A government statement specified that a curfew will not be imposed, and the freedom to meet publicly or demonstrate in marches will not be hindered.

Young noted that the escalation of violence over the weekend in the capital, Port of Spain, helped declare a state of emergency in the early hours of Monday.

Young explained: “You will recall that on Saturday, just after three o’clock in the afternoon outside the Beeson Street police station, a shooting occurred using a heavy-caliber automatic weapon.”

Local media described the shooting as an ambush.

Suspected gang leader Calvin Lee arrived at the police station to sign a bail book, but when he and his entourage left, the Daily Express reported that gunmen emerged from a nearby truck and began shooting.

One person was killed. Lee himself managed to escape. But Young explained that the shooting led to retaliatory killings among local gangs.

He added that within 24 hours, six people were shot in Laventille, a suburb of Port of Spain. Five of them were killed. Young said more retaliatory attacks are still expected.

“It is expected that there will be increased retaliatory activities by criminal elements in and around certain places in Trinidad and Tobago, which immediately vindicated us and removed us from what we would 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 brazen violence in retaliatory shootings on a scale so widespread as to threaten people and endanger public safety.

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

He indicated the involvement of AK-47 and AR-15 rifles.

“Over the last month or so, and in fact, within that, the government has been concerned about the use of illegal high-capacity firearms – high-caliber firearms including automatic weapons which unfortunately are a scourge throughout the Caribbean. “The whole thing,” Young said.

Caribbean countries Don’t make it The firearms themselves, and many of the weapons used in gang violence, were imported illegally.

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

In March, the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute Found The United States was the source of about 42 percent of global arms exports.

A 2017 analysis The Small Arms Survey also found that the United States has the largest number of private weapons per capita, with American civilians owning 40 percent of the world’s firearms.

Guns coming from the United States have been linked to crimes across the Caribbean, from Haiti and Jamaica to Trinidad and Tobago.

The United States cooperated with 13 Caribbean countries to help stop the illegal trade in firearms. Between 2018 and 2022, an estimated 7,399 firearms collected from crimes in the region were sent to the United States to trace their provenance.

In October, the US Government Accountability Office published a report containing its findings. Of all the firearms recovered and traced during the four-year period, there were a total of 5,399 — Or 73 percent -Originated from the United States. A few hundred others were of mysterious origins.

The spread of illicit firearms has been linked to increased violence in the Caribbean. Trinidad and Tobago, for example, suffers from a record homicide rate.

In December alone, 61 murders occurred, according to the government. The country has recorded 623 murders so far in 2024.

“The gangs account for 263 of them,” Rep. Fitzgerald Hinds, D-Homeland Security Secretary, said during Monday’s news conference.

“As a result, we consider this declaration of a public emergency to confront criminals and allow law enforcement to reach them easier than usual, in light of the crises they have presented to this country.”