SHAL­IZA HAS­SANALI

Se­nior Re­porter

shal­iza.has­sanali@guardian.co.tt

Brazen day­light rob­beries in the city of Port-of-Spain on Fri­day have left ven­dors, shop­pers and busi­ness own­ers un­easy as they car­ry out their dai­ly ac­tiv­i­ties.

Pres­i­dent of the Down­town Own­ers and Mer­chants As­so­ci­a­tion Gre­go­ry Aboud has point­ed to a well-or­gan­ised group of crim­i­nals who have been in­still­ing fear in peo­ple as they come in groups to pounce on them.

The thieves, who are known by scores of busi­ness own­ers and ven­dors, he said, have been net­work­ing to avoid be­ing caught by mem­bers of the Trinidad and To­ba­go Po­lice Ser­vice.

Some of these crim­i­nals al­so in­volve school­child­ren as young as 14. A dis­traught ven­dor said she was at­tacked by a boy in a school uni­form on Fri­day. His moth­er, she said, lat­er re­turned to apol­o­gise for his ac­tions.

“The word has spread that any­one could do this (rob) on the streets ... and it would not sur­prise me if the school chil­dren al­so get this sort of in­for­ma­tion,” Aboud said.

His com­ments came on the heels of Fri­day’s rob­bery of 62-year-old Mar­a­lyn Cal­len­der-Mor­ri­son—the hold­er of dual cit­i­zen­ship for T&T and Amer­i­ca—who was re­lieved of $170,000 in cash on Queen Janelle Com­mis­siong Street af­ter be­ing beat­en by the ban­dits.

The video of Cal­len­der-Mor­ri­son be­ing at­tacked by the rob­bers went vi­ral and cre­at­ed out­rage among the pub­lic.

Still vis­i­bly shak­en yes­ter­day when the Sun­day Guardian vis­it­ed her at a rel­a­tive’s home in Ari­ma, Cal­len­der-Mor­ri­son said she was fol­lowed by a gang of men from a bank on In­de­pen­dence Square af­ter with­draw­ing $65,000 in cash to re­pair her home in To­co.

She al­so had US$15,000 in cash, two cheque­books, bank cards, a dri­ver’s li­cence, a cell phone val­ued at US$1,000 and a pass­port in her hand­bag.

Cal­len­der-Mor­ri­son, a T&T na­tion­al who mi­grat­ed to New York more than 40 years ago and be­came an Amer­i­can cit­i­zen, said T&T, which was once a par­adise, had now be­come a haven for mur­ders, crime and crim­i­nal­i­ty.

She said af­ter leav­ing the bank she got a strange feel­ing that she was be­ing fol­lowed.

As she walked along Queen Street, she said three men came from be­hind and start­ed yank­ing her hand­bag off her shoul­der.

“I tried to put up a fight but they kept telling me to let go of the bag.”

A strug­gle en­sued and Cal­len­der-Mor­ri­son was thrown on the pave­ment where she struck her head and al­most passed out.

 Her at­tack­ers then dragged her for sev­er­al feet on the pave­ment as she con­tin­ued to grip her hand­bag.

“I even­tu­al­ly let go of the hand­bag af­ter be­ing kicked mul­ti­ple times in the face, chest and back by one of the rob­bers.”

Cal­len­der-Mor­ri­son said no mem­ber of the pub­lic tried to in­ter­vene dur­ing the rob­bery.

“When you look at it, is your own Black peo­ple do­ing these kinds of things to each oth­er. For me to come here and for this thing to hap­pen it’s a shame.”

Cal­len­der-Mor­ri­son said the in­ci­dent had left a sour taste in her mouth, and she promised not to re­turn to T&T.

“Since the in­ci­dent, my chil­dren back home have been cry­ing non-stop. I didn’t sleep last night be­cause I was so scared.

“Peo­ple are liv­ing in fear ... you are scared to even go out­side. This is no life for peo­ple to live.”

Cal­len­der-Mor­ri­son said the sit­u­a­tion could have turned out dif­fer­ent­ly.

“I could have met my death yes­ter­day. I am a pray­ing soul. I al­ways ask God to shield and pro­tect me. But thank God I am alive. Mon­ey could al­ways be re­placed but my life can­not. I am just hap­py that I am alive to­day.”

Hours be­fore Cal­len­der-Mor­ri­son’s rob­bery, a Woman Po­lice Con­sta­ble at­tached to the Vic­tim Sup­port Unit in To­ba­go was al­so at­tacked by ban­dits in the city.

The 40-year-old po­lice of­fi­cer told in­ves­ti­ga­tors that she was walk­ing east along In­de­pen­dence Square around 9.50 am when on reach­ing the vicin­i­ty of Lucky Bak­ery she was ap­proached by a man who snatched a gold heart-shaped chain worth $8,000 that she was wear­ing.

The rob­ber then ran to­wards Char­lotte Street and es­caped.

Act­ing on in­tel­li­gence, of­fi­cers re­cov­ered the chain but no one was ar­rest­ed.

Aboud: There is anger, dis­ap­point­ment

Aboud told the Sun­day Guardian yes­ter­day the video of Cal­len­der-Mor­ri­son’s rob­bery evoked anger.

“There has been a groundswell of anger and dis­ap­point­ment at the way we have been aban­doned. We can all agree that the sit­u­a­tion that ex­ists in our coun­try is com­plete­ly out of con­trol. I am not in a state of pan­ic ... I am in a state of anger be­cause we are be­ing left de­fence­less. You are hand­cuff­ing the cit­i­zens of the coun­try and you are al­low­ing the crim­i­nals to be free. This is wrong.”

In­sist­ing that the sit­u­a­tion had to be re­versed, Aboud said, “It can­not be that a so­ci­ety can de­scend in­to an­ar­chy like this.”

Aboud said he was left to won­der how the rob­bers knew the woman had with­drawn mon­ey from the bank.

He called for emer­gency ac­tion by the banks for the pro­tec­tion and safe­ty of their cus­tomers.

“The banks have to re­alise that they are fail­ing us on the ques­tion of pro­tect­ing their clients.

“You can’t have this num­ber of repet­i­tive cas­es of per­sons be­ing robbed when they come from the banks and all we can get via a re­sponse is to of­fer a re­ward through Crime Stop­pers. Sure­ly you must be jok­ing if that is the on­ly re­sponse that you have.”

In light of the chain of dar­ing mug­gings and vi­cious rob­beries, Aboud pro­posed that Fi­nance Min­is­ter Colm Im­bert “go to Par­lia­ment and im­me­di­ate­ly re­quest pas­sage of some sort of amend­ment to the tax act that would give busi­ness­es and home­own­ers a re­duc­tion in their tax bill for per­son­al pro­tec­tion”.

“Give us a tax cred­it,” Aboud ap­pealed. “Give the com­mu­ni­ties and neigh­bour­hoods a tax cred­it and al­low them to use that mon­ey, by way of proof, of course, to use that mon­ey to pro­tect them­selves. Al­low us to put pa­trols on the street to pro­tect the shop­pers who are keep­ing us alive in the city of Port-of-Spain.”

He said the city was “un­der siege” and called for an un­der­cov­er po­lice op­er­a­tion to catch the cul­prits.

“We know who they are. We have pro­vid­ed pho­to and video ev­i­dence of the per­pe­tra­tors ... some of whom are well known to us.”

In the last four months, he said, there had been an up­surge of snatch-and-grab in­ci­dents in the city.

In­sist­ing that the crime wave has gone too far, Aboud said what is tak­ing place now is “damn non­sense”.

Yes­ter­day, sev­er­al down­town ven­dors and shop­pers ad­mit­ted that crime was on an up­surge in the city and called for a high­er po­lice pres­ence.

Fred­er­ick Street ven­dor Mary Cassie said on Fri­day a school­boy snatched a watch from her stall and af­ter be­ing caught, he ad­mit­ted that he was pres­sured in­to steal­ing by his class­mates.

“It’s re­al­ly sad and un­for­tu­nate that crime has been on the up­swing,” Cassie lament­ed.

A Queen Street busi­ness own­er said that the po­lice would al­ways show up af­ter a crime had been com­mit­ted.

“This band of thieves is mash­ing up town. We need more po­lice pro­tec­tion. We need help.”

Po­lice: One man held for bru­tal rob­bery, more boots on the ground soon

Os­wain Subero, As­sis­tant Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice North East, told the Sun­day Guardian yes­ter­day that the In­ter-Agency Task Force ar­rest­ed one per­son on Fri­day for Cal­len­der-Mor­ri­son’s rob­bery.

“The po­lice are con­tin­u­ing their ex­er­cis­es. We have been look­ing over the footage and have some iden­ti­ty of the per­sons in­volved. I am cer­tain we will solve that crime.”

He promised that the TTPS would put more boots on the ground in Port-of-Spain soon.

“So, we should see some changes.”