Trinidad to declare limited state of emergency—PM

PORT OF SPAIN — Trinidad and Tobago’s prime minister has announced she intends to declare a limited state of emergency in designated areas of the country in response to a surge in violent crime.

The move followed seven murders late last week in three separate incidents, which Prime Minister Kamla Persad-Bissessar blamed on a reaction by gangs to recent drug seizures by police.

“We have the will to tackle the crime problem in Trinidad and Tobago,” she said late Sunday, vowing “to place every resource at our disposal towards waging and winning this war on crime.”

“The nation will not be held to ransom by marauding groups of thugs bent on creating havoc on our society.”

President Maxwell Richards must approve any state of emergency, and Persad-Bissessar said she would meet with him and opposition leader Keith Rowley about the plan.

She said her national security council had decided to impose a limited state of emergency in nearly 20 “hot spots” around the country.

She said the aim was to “halt the current spike in gang activity and crime in general in the shortest possible time.”