As the full swing of the Christ­mas sea­son draws clos­er, busi­ness­es say they are yet to see the promised joint po­lice/army pa­trols.

In fact, busi­ness lead­ers are call­ing for these mea­sures to be im­ple­ment­ed soon­er rather than lat­er, say­ing se­cu­ri­ty is per­ti­nent for cus­tomer con­fi­dence through­out the coun­try es­pe­cial­ly at this peak pe­ri­od.

In Oc­to­ber, Pres­i­dent Chris­tine Kan­ga­loo called 100 De­fence Force re­serve of­fi­cers to lend sup­port to the po­lice dur­ing the pre Christ­mas sea­son through to 2024 Car­ni­val.

That move had come on the heels of this coun­try record­ing eight mur­ders in 24 hours.

How­ev­er, such sol­diers are yet to be seen when the Busi­ness Guardian reached out to own­ers to get their feed­back on the ini­tia­tive.

They said they are very con­cerned about the safe­ty of the shop­ping pub­lic over the Christ­mas Sea­son.

Ri­car­do Mo­hammed, vice pres­i­dent of the Con­fed­er­a­tion of Re­gion­al Busi­ness Cham­bers (CR­BC) and pres­i­dent of the East­ern Busi­ness Mer­chants As­so­ci­a­tion (EBMA) said his en­ti­ty con­tin­ues to work very close­ly with the San­gre Grande Po­lice Sta­tion Coun­cil to en­sure that the po­lice come out in their num­bers for height­ened vis­i­bil­i­ty and to give shop­pers the as­sur­ance of a safe and en­joy­able ex­pe­ri­ence.

In this vein, the East­ern Busi­ness & Mer­chants As­so­ci­a­tion (EBMA) is call­ing for the pres­ence of the army per­son­nel to work to­geth­er with the po­lice to serve as a de­ter­rent to crim­i­nals.

Echo­ing this sen­ti­ment was Samuel George of the Gas­par­il­lo Cham­ber who al­so made the call for the joint po­lice/army pa­trols.

“I am call­ing on the po­lice to en­hance their vis­i­bil­i­ty to serve as a de­ter­rent to the ex­ist­ing crim­i­nal el­e­ments. But more than that, we want to see the pres­ence of the army not on­ly in Gas­par­il­lo, but in all the com­mer­cial dis­tricts as well.

“In ad­di­tion to this, the of­fice of the Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er must seek the grant­i­ng of the Firearms Users Li­cens­es (FULs) to busi­nes­sown­ers, so that they will have a fight­ing chance against the per­pe­tra­tors who are bent on com­mit­ting rob­beries and vi­o­lat­ing in­no­cent cit­i­zens while they go about their shop­ping ex­pe­ri­ence,” George said.

While the joint army/po­lice pa­trols are per­ti­nent to busi­ness cen­tres, San Fer­nan­do Busi­ness As­so­ci­a­tion pres­i­dent, Daphne Bartlett said these should not on­ly be in San Fer­nan­do alone, but through­out the coun­try as well.

In a re­cent pre­vi­ous in­ter­view with Guardian Me­dia Ltd on the same top­ic Bartlett said, “As far as safe­ty goes I have not seen any ad­di­tion­al mea­sures. By now, we should be see­ing joint po­lice/army pa­trols. We have asked for that on sev­er­al oc­ca­sions but I am not see­ing them bring­ing out this joint po­lice/army pa­trols,” adding that this par­tic­u­lar plan has worked over the years.

Ac­cord­ing to Bartlett the cur­rent crime sit­u­a­tion can­not con­tin­ue.

“What’s go­ing on in this coun­try?” she asked.

Fur­ther, she said so con­cerned were some busi­ness­es about the crime sit­u­a­tion that they were ei­ther clos­ing up shop or send­ing their chil­dren abroad.

“They might want to stay be­cause they have good busi­ness­es here but they are scared for the lives of their chil­dren,” Bartlett added.

She stressed that the Christ­mas sea­son is the time when busi­ness­es see a greater vol­ume of sales to make up for any short­falls that may oc­cur dur­ing pre­vi­ous months, main­tain­ing that it is of crit­i­cal im­por­tance for the joint pa­trols be im­me­di­ate­ly ex­e­cut­ed.

In giv­ing some ad­vice to fel­low busi­ness own­ers, Bartlett said, “Keep out­side doors locked when clos­ing for busi­ness. Al­ways be vig­i­lant, keep your sur­veil­lance cam­eras func­tion­al at all times and I ad­vise all busi­ness cham­bers to work with their po­lice sta­tion coun­cils to rat­i­fy a tac­ti­cal crime plan for this Christ­mas Sea­son.”

Pres­i­dent of the Fyz­abad Cham­ber of Com­merce Ang­ie Jairam al­so joined the list of busi­ness­es ex­press­ing con­cern about the lack of promised joint pa­trols and about the safe­ty of shop­pers dur­ing this busy sea­son.

She too has al­so urged busi­ness own­ers and even res­i­dents to be con­stant­ly vig­i­lant and alert.

Ac­cord­ing to Jairam, once mem­bers of the pro­tec­tive ser­vices are out in full force, the crim­i­nals will have to think twice about com­mit­ting any un­law­ful acts.

Pres­i­dent of the Cunu­pia Busi­ness Cham­ber, Rashid Ali al­so not­ed the lack sol­diers on the na­tion’s streets say­ing, “Cer­tain­ly, mea­sures like joint pa­trols will en­sure of cit­i­zens will feel safe and will be en­cour­aged to con­duct af­ter-hours shop­ping. But bear in mind that safe­ty is every­one’s busi­ness and peo­ple must be alert at all times.”

At the same time, he added that the onus is on busi­ness own­ers to se­cure their premis­es, to en­sure their alarms and sur­veil­lance cam­eras are func­tion­al, and at all times and to stay in touch with mem­bers of the po­lice sta­tion coun­cil as much as pos­si­ble, keep­ing of­fi­cers in­formed as to what is tran­spir­ing with­in the Cunu­pia dis­trict.

Up north in Port-of-Spain, Chief Ex­ec­u­tive Of­fi­cer of the T&T Cham­ber of In­dus­try and Com­merce Stephen de Gannes said any law en­force­ment is al­ways wel­comed how­ev­er, he too is yet to see joint pa­trols.

While joint po­lice/army pa­trols are key de­ter­rents to crim­i­nal el­e­ments, George Alex­is, pres­i­dent of the Point Fortin Cham­ber not­ed that in­tel­li­gence-led polic­ing is al­so an im­por­tant fac­tor re­gard­ing the shar­ing of in­for­ma­tion be­tween law en­force­ment and the busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty.

“The im­por­tance of the gath­er­ing of in­tel­li­gence and the use of that in­tel­li­gence will be the step­ping blocks to­wards tak­ing a proac­tive ap­proach to crime and pos­si­bly stop the crimes be­fore they can be com­mit­ted,” he ex­plained.

Alex­is has al­so sug­gest­ed to res­i­dents of Point Fortin to share as much in­for­ma­tion with the po­lice so that mea­sures can be put in place to deal with any po­ten­tial crimes as he too al­so called for more foot and mo­bile pa­trols in and around the bor­ough.

Chair­man of the CR­BC Vivek Char­ran fur­ther ad­vised busi­ness­es on the main streets and com­mer­cial dis­tricts to have a What­sApp group or have di­rect calls to the re­spec­tive po­lice sta­tions if they spot sus­pi­cious peo­ple walk­ing around as he not­ed that more peo­ple will al­so be at the banks con­duct­ing busi­ness as well at the ATMs.

By hav­ing what such as What­sApp group or di­rect po­lice links, Char­ran said the foot pa­trols or mo­bile unit could then re­spond at once.