KEVON FELMINE

Se­nior Re­porter

kevon.felmine@guardian.co.tt

Busi­ness op­er­a­tors in Princes Town say they are scep­ti­cal about re­port­ing ex­tor­tion, de­spite mem­bers of the new­ly formed An­ti-Ex­tor­tion Unit vis­it­ing the area.

Sev­er­al busi­ness op­er­a­tors told Guardian Me­dia yes­ter­day that al­though po­lice con­duct­ed a walk­a­bout on Thurs­day, not all busi­ness­es were vis­it­ed, and many have not ex­pe­ri­enced ex­tor­tion first-hand. They not­ed that crime in the shop­ping dis­trict was rel­a­tive­ly low, with po­lice typ­i­cal­ly re­spond­ing prompt­ly to any dis­tur­bance. The po­lice sta­tion was lo­cat­ed at the heart of the area, they said.

Jew­eller In­shan Ali shared that while he has not per­son­al­ly ex­pe­ri­enced ex­tor­tion, he is aware of re­cent cas­es where crim­i­nals tar­get­ed a few busi­ness­es in the com­mu­ni­ty, de­mand­ing “tax­es” to stay safe.

“My per­son­al aware­ness of the tax they are ask­ing for is that this group of peo­ple, ob­vi­ous­ly, are ban­dits. I would say ban­dits be­cause good civil­ians will not walk around busi­ness places and de­mand tax­es from the own­ers of the en­ter­prise for no rea­son. Why would I tax peo­ple,” Ali said.

Ali said he was un­aware of whether busi­ness­es had paid these “tax­es” or the amounts de­mand­ed, but not­ed that po­lice were ad­dress­ing the is­sue. How­ev­er, Ali ad­mit­ted that ex­tor­tion across T&T was fright­en­ing, and he some­times felt a sense of un­ease.

In in­ves­ti­gat­ing, the news team iden­ti­fied one tar­get­ed busi­ness where some­one re­port­ed­ly ap­proached a staff mem­ber and de­mand­ed that the own­er pay a “tax” to con­tin­ue op­er­at­ing. How­ev­er, the busi­ness own­er de­clined to dis­cuss the in­ci­dent.

Fruit ven­dor Dave Ram­nath said he spoke with mem­bers of the An­ti-Ex­tor­tion Unit and post­ed their fly­er on his shop’s door. Al­though he has not been ex­tort­ed, Ram­nath does not feel safe re­port­ing in­ci­dents to the po­lice. He men­tioned pre­vi­ous oc­ca­sions where he re­port­ed in­ci­dents, which he claimed were not ef­fec­tive­ly ad­dressed by of­fi­cers.

“There was a time I re­port­ed a per­son, and by the time we called the po­lice, they reached by us and gone back by the sta­tion, the per­son al­ready reached there, and that said per­son knew the po­lice too,” Ram­nath claimed.

One elec­tron­ics op­er­a­tor, who asked to re­main anony­mous, claimed that crim­i­nals ex­tort­ing busi­ness­es might have con­tacts with­in the Po­lice Ser­vice (TTPS).

“The Po­lice Ser­vice al­ready broke the trust of peo­ple many times, so it will be hard to trust them for us to go and re­port it,” the op­er­a­tor said.

Judy Thomas, man­ag­er at the cloth­ing store, Zra­da, said she was aware of the An­ti-Ex­tor­tion Unit and felt com­fort­able re­port­ing ex­tor­tion if it oc­curred.

Min­is­ter in the Min­istry of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Kei­th Scot­land vis­it­ed busi­ness­es in Ch­agua­nas and San Fer­nan­do, ac­com­pa­nied by po­lice and army of­fi­cials, in a bid to crack down on the rise in ex­tor­tion.