SHAR­LENE RAM­PER­SAD

shar­lene.ram­per­sad@guardian.co.tt

With crime at an all-time high, cit­i­zens are do­ing all they can to safe­guard them­selves and their prop­er­ties.

This push at be­ing proac­tive has giv­en rise to a boom­ing mil­lion dol­lar in­dus­try that pro­vides every­thing from Closed Cir­cuit Tele­vi­sion (CCTV) cam­eras for the or­di­nary cit­i­zen’s home to armed es­corts for the busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty as they make bank de­posits.

A quick search on Google shows list­ings for 102 se­cu­ri­ty com­pa­nies through­out T&T. CCTV cam­eras are sold in su­per­mar­kets and com­put­er stores or in on­line stores, giv­ing con­sumers an op­por­tu­ni­ty to buy their own cam­eras and pay for in­stal­la­tion.

And if you have a ve­hi­cle, with just $800 you can have a Glob­al Po­si­tion­ing Sys­tem (GPS) sys­tem in­stalled to track and mon­i­tor your ve­hi­cle any­where in the coun­try. For an an­nu­al fee, there are com­pa­nies that spe­cialise in re­cov­er­ing stolen ve­hi­cles with­in hours.

The T&T Guardian spoke to one young en­tre­pre­neur who is cap­i­tal­is­ing on the boom­ing se­cu­ri­ty in­dus­try.

Ju­dah Ram, 22, is the own­er of Li­on Lo­gis­tics Lim­it­ed and pro­vides CCTV cam­eras, alarms, re­mote con­trolled gates and garage doors, in­ter­coms and full sur­veil­lance pack­ages for homes.

“I got in­to this busi­ness when I was 18 be­cause of the fact it was in great de­mand and it is still in great de­mand due to the crime sit­u­a­tion in the coun­try,” Ram said.

He does an av­er­age of sev­en in­stal­la­tions per week and said in 2018, he saw a great im­prove­ment in his busi­ness.

“In the last year alone, I got more jobs than I got in the first three years I was busi­ness.”

Ram does in­stal­la­tions in all ar­eas of the coun­try.

“I have done work in Ma­yaro, Trinci­ty, San­gre Grande, Va­len­cia, Munroe Road, Pe­nal, Siparia San­ta Flo­ra and to­day I’m work­ing in Tacarigua.”

While he is grate­ful for the busi­ness, Ram said most of the peo­ple who came to him for se­cu­ri­ty sys­tems on­ly do so af­ter they had been robbed or fall­en vic­tim to crime.

“On De­cem­ber 27, I had an in­stal­la­tion in Va­len­cia be­cause those cus­tomers got robbed three days be­fore Christ­mas. The ma­jor­i­ty of cus­tomers will put in cam­eras on­ly af­ter they were robbed as they try to pro­tect them­selves from fu­ture at­tacks.”

With the range of ser­vices he of­fers, Ram said cus­tomers who on­ly want CCTV most times change their minds af­ter get­ting ad­vice on all the ways they could pro­tect them­selves.

One of his cus­tomers, a Cen­tral res­i­dent, said he had spent over $50,000 in cam­eras and alarms alone. Kei­th, who asked that his full name not be used, said he fell vic­tim to crime a few years ago and de­cid­ed to try to pro­tect him­self in the fu­ture.

“Be­cause of the crime sit­u­a­tion, I de­cid­ed to use pre­ven­ta­tive mea­sures and be proac­tive rather than re­ac­tive. With­in the area here, there have been a lot of break-ins; here is a hotspot lit­er­al­ly. In one night, they broke in­to some­one’s garage and stole all their tools, stole a Navara, broke in­to an­oth­er guy’s place and beat him with a pig foot—all of that in one night,” Kei­th said.

Kei­th said he con­tact­ed Ram about in­stalling cam­eras and an alarm sys­tem, which cost him over $50,000 when the job was com­plete.

“I had to up­grade the cam­era sys­tems I had, through­out the perime­ter of my home, I had to put in alarms and it’s a lot of mon­ey- when you buy cam­eras, DVR, for a good 16-chan­nel cam­era sys­tem with a DVR can cost about $10,000 and all of that is one lo­ca­tion then to pay for labour, ca­bles, an alarm sys­tem on the perime­ter, spe­cial cam­eras, it is over $50,000 be­cause some­times with the cam­eras you have to buy parts to boost the pow­er, the sig­nal—it’s a lit­tle com­pli­cat­ed. I did my gates and fenc­ing about six years ago and that was an­oth­er cost al­to­geth­er.”

Kei­th said in ad­di­tion to his pri­vate res­i­dence, he had al­so spent thou­sands equip­ping his busi­ness place with cam­eras and alarms. Aside from the cost of these pre­ven­ta­tive mea­sures, Kei­th said he has faced an ad­di­tion­al loss at his busi­ness from turn­ing away sus­pi­cious “cus­tomers.”

Pres­i­dent of the Ari­ma Busi­ness As­so­ci­a­tion Reval Chat­ter­goon said along with the cost to pro­tect their prop­er­ty, busi­ness own­ers were al­so los­ing mon­ey be­cause they had to close up ear­li­er than usu­al be­cause of crime.

“You are not able to open as late as you nor­mal­ly would do, all through the Christ­mas sea­son we had busi­ness­es clos­ing up as soon as it got dark out­side,” Chat­ter­goon said. “One thing is you have to be afraid of some­one com­ing in to rob you, then the cus­tomers are afraid of be­ing robbed so they won’t come out in the evening and then when you close up and go­ing home you have to afraid that some­one will fol­low you or at­tack you on your way.”

Chat­ter­goon said busi­ness­es must al­so fork out sev­er­al thou­sand every month to pay for se­cu­ri­ty of­fi­cers and alarm mon­i­tor­ing.

San Fer­nan­do Busi­ness As­so­ci­a­tion head Daphne Bartlett es­ti­mat­ed that ten per cent of her sales went to­wards se­cu­ri­ty.

“With the high lev­els of crime and mur­ders, we def­i­nite­ly have to be spend­ing more for se­cu­ri­ty, for ad­di­tion­al cam­eras, ad­di­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty of­fi­cers and right now sales are ter­ri­ble,” Bartlett said.

Both Bartlett and Chat­ter­goon said they had seen an in­crease in the num­ber of busi­ness­es that catered to se­cu­ri­ty for res­i­den­tial and busi­ness cus­tomers.