A ma­jor boost in the po­lice’s an­ti-crime ar­se­nal is ex­pect­ed to un­fold fol­low­ing Wednes­day night’s pas­sage of the Bail (Amend­ment) Bill which was sur­pris­ing­ly sup­port­ed by the Op­po­si­tion. Both sides from the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives came to­geth­er in a rare show of uni­ty to pass the leg­is­la­tion. It was passed around 7.25 pm by a to­tal of 32 votes — 22 Gov­ern­ment MPs and 10 UNC MPs present.

The pos­i­tive out­come came dur­ing the fi­nal stage of Wednes­day’s spe­cial Par­lia­ment sit­ting to de­bate the bill – and af­ter sev­er­al days of lob­by­ing by Gov­ern­ment to sway pub­lic sup­port. The gov­ern­ment had called Par­lia­ment out of re­cess to de­bate the bill.

At the height of the re­cent crime cri­sis, the Po­lice Ser­vice had re­quest­ed the sev­en clause bill to lock away re­peat of­fend­ers blamed for the sud­den spike in gang-re­lat­ed mur­ders. The pro­vi­sion of the leg­is­la­tion re­stricts bail for 120 days if some­one has a con­vic­tion for se­ri­ous of­fences and is charged for one of them again. Bail will al­so be re­strict­ed if some­one is charged for a se­ri­ous of­fence, is out on bail and gets charged for the same cat­e­go­ry of of­fence.(Trinidad Guardian)…[+]