Jesse Ramdeo, An­drea Perez-Sobers, Shas­tri Boodan

Mem­bers of the busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty are frus­trat­ed and fed up with the re­cent spate of killings in the coun­try. Busi­ness own­ers told Guardian Me­dia yes­ter­day that not on­ly are they un­hap­py with the con­stant loss of lives, but they have been left daunt­ed as the coun­try’s eco­nom­ic fu­ture is un­der threat by gun-tot­ing crim­i­nals.

T&T record­ed 19 mur­ders be­tween Thurs­day and yes­ter­day. Among those killed were three men who were gunned down out­side the Piz­za Boys out­let in Cunu­pia on Sun­day af­ter­noon.

A Rio Claro busi­ness­woman iden­ti­fied as Caris­sa Ram­rat­tan was al­so shot dead short­ly af­ter drop­ping off her ve­hi­cle to be ser­viced at Toy­ota Trinidad, South Park, San Fer­nan­do, on Sat­ur­day. 

Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Er­la Hare­wood-Christo­pher and se­nior of­fi­cers as­sured on Sun­day that all po­lice of­fi­cers in sta­tions across the coun­try will be on high alert fol­low­ing the vi­o­lent and bloody week­end. But this has left busi­ness own­ers scep­ti­cal. The time has come for ac­tion.

T&T Cham­ber

Pres­i­dent of the Trinidad and To­ba­go Cham­ber of In­dus­try and Com­merce, Ki­ran Ma­haraj, said ex­ist­ing crime-fight­ing mea­sures have not been yield­ing the suc­cess that her mem­bers and the wider pub­lic have been hop­ing for.

“We are very scep­ti­cal as to what has been put in place to try and curb the spate of crime. About two years ago, I was very hope­ful be­cause I felt that we had a crime con­fer­ence and there were many dis­cus­sions. I know that many ideas were put out there, but I have yet to see a holis­tic and prop­er­ly co­or­di­nat­ed” ap­proach with stake­hold­ers to ad­dress crime. 

Ma­haraj not­ed that crime re­mained a mul­ti-lay­ered is­sue and said it was time for all stake­hold­ers, not just the Gov­ern­ment, to act. “I think they need to get to­geth­er reg­u­lar­ly and con­sis­tent­ly with civ­il so­ci­ety or­gan­i­sa­tions and with busi­ness sec­tor or­gan­i­sa­tions to re­al­ly dis­cuss what has been hap­pen­ing and ideas. In busi­ness, we are see­ing where there may be op­por­tu­ni­ties to curb it. The civ­il so­ci­ety or­gan­i­sa­tions work on the ground and know where these things are hap­pen­ing; they too have ideas. But I am not see­ing the kind of round ta­ble dis­cus­sions to re­al­ly deal with this sit­u­a­tion.” 

Ma­haraj al­so lament­ed the im­pact crime has been hav­ing on com­merce. “The mem­bers are very dis­grun­tled; some want to rein­vest in their coun­try but are ap­pre­hen­sive about it be­cause, at the end of the day, they don’t feel safe.” 

DO­MA

Pres­i­dent of the Down­town Own­ers and Mer­chants As­so­ci­a­tion, Gre­go­ry Aboud, ex­plained that the brazen­ness of crim­i­nals con­tin­ues to point to a lack of fear for the au­thor­i­ties and that it was time for im­me­di­ate ac­tion.

“We are liv­ing in a coun­try where no one is ap­pre­hend­ed, this is the grue­some truth of these grue­some crimes and all the press con­fer­ences in the world, not want­i­ng to de­mean or di­min­ish the pro­nounce­ments made, but all the press con­fer­ences in the world are not go­ing to make any more dif­fer­ence un­less we start see­ing some fear among crim­i­nals.”

Greater San Fer­nan­do Area Cham­ber

The pres­i­dent of the Greater San Fer­nan­do Area Cham­ber of Com­merce, Ki­ran Singh, mean­while, stat­ed that crime has in­fil­trat­ed south Trinidad and in­ject­ed fear in­to the mem­bers of the busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty.

“There are grow­ing con­cerns in the busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty that more has to be done in terms of pro­tect­ing the in­vest­ments of busi­ness hous­es and en­tre­pre­neurs and ex­ec­u­tives who go about their dai­ly busi­ness­es. For what­ev­er rea­son peo­ple are be­ing mur­dered, we need to get it ad­dressed in the short­est pos­si­ble time to en­sure there is no more fall­out from the busi­ness sec­tor in terms of in­vest­ment, es­pe­cial­ly giv­en that the en­gine of growth is in the non-en­er­gy sec­tor.” 

In re­sponse to the uptick in mur­ders, the cham­ber pres­i­dent called for the im­ple­men­ta­tion of a full com­ple­ment of TTPS and mu­nic­i­pal of­fi­cers on the ground, as well as joint army and po­lice pa­trols. He al­so ag­i­tat­ed for the use of drone tech­nol­o­gy to track down crim­i­nals.

Singh said his or­gan­i­sa­tion has been en­gag­ing in dis­cus­sions with the TTPS and the may­or of San Fer­nan­do about ar­eas to be pa­trolled.

Ari­ma Busi­ness As­so­ci­a­tion

Ari­ma Busi­ness As­so­ci­a­tion (ABA) be­lieves the Gov­ern­ment’s fix­a­tion on the Firearms User’s Li­cence (FUL) is­sue needs to stop. Pres­i­dent of the as­so­ci­a­tion, Chris­t­ian Ram­per­sad, said the fo­cus should be on il­le­gal firearms be­ing used by crim­i­nals.

“We, the ABA, be­lieve that an in­tel­li­gence-dri­ven and co­or­di­nat­ed, tar­get­ed ap­proach to the crime is re­quired from the TTPS and, if nec­es­sary, with the as­sis­tance of the TTDF,” Ram­per­sad said.

“The fix­a­tion of this ad­min­is­tra­tion on the FUL is­sue needs to stop. The facts are clear: less than one per cent of gun-re­lat­ed in­ci­dents are caused by FUL hold­ers. There­fore, more than 99 per cent of these gun-re­lat­ed in­ci­dents in­volve il­le­gal firearms. The fo­cus should be on il­le­gal firearms and not FUL hold­ers.

East­ern Busi­ness And Mer­chants As­so­ci­a­tion

Mean­while, Ri­car­do Mo­hammed, pres­i­dent of the East­ern Busi­ness and Mer­chants As­so­ci­a­tion (EBMA) said their mem­bers are “ex­treme­ly con­cerned with the high state of crime” with­in the east­ern re­gion and, by ex­ten­sion, To­ba­go. Peo­ple in the area are liv­ing in fear, he added. “We are ac­cus­tomed to our area be­ing one of the safest dis­tricts through­out our twin is­land re­pub­lic. Crime has got­ten sig­nif­i­cant­ly out of con­trol. Home in­va­sions, rob­beries, mur­ders, dou­ble mur­ders, and mul­ti­ple mur­ders are a clear in­di­ca­tion that the crime sit­u­a­tion is not be­ing man­aged un­der the ex­ist­ing TTPS and the Min­istry of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty.

“Bil­lions of dol­lars have been spent in the last ten years, and we have made no progress. In the pri­vate sec­tor, peo­ple would be fired for such bla­tant non-per­for­mance and wastage of funds with no tan­gi­ble re­sults.

“Cit­i­zens of the East are liv­ing in fear; the busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty no longer has a thriv­ing evening busi­ness be­cause cus­tomers are scared to shop in the evening, and busi­ness­es are clos­ing ear­li­er to pre­vent late-night rob­beries. It is sad to see our beloved towns in the East be­com­ing ghost towns af­ter 7 pm.”

Mo­hammed said those in au­thor­i­ty need to get se­ri­ous. “We must ask why ex­ist­ing strate­gies are not work­ing, how of­ten they are re­viewed, whether they are up­grad­ed to achieve pos­i­tive out­comes, and who are the peo­ple en­trust­ed to car­ry out, im­ple­ment, as­sess, re­view, and ex­e­cute these strate­gies. Cur­rent crime pre­ven­tion strate­gies have failed,” he added.

Those en­trust­ed with the re­spon­si­bil­i­ty to deal with crime must be held ac­count­able, he said.

Ch­agua­nas Cham­ber of Com­merce

The Ch­agua­nas Cham­ber of Com­merce is rais­ing an ur­gent call to ac­tion as lo­cal busi­ness­es grap­ple with an es­ca­lat­ing wave of crime that in­cludes mur­ders, ex­tor­tion, rob­beries, and home in­va­sions.

Cham­ber head Bal­dath Ma­haraj said, “While the re­cent re­sponse from the Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice was an­tic­i­pat­ed, it has not al­le­vi­at­ed the con­cerns of our busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty. There is a sense of dis­il­lu­sion­ment with the Min­istry of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty, as busi­ness­men have lost faith in the cur­rent mea­sures be­ing tak­en. The state­ments made by the com­mis­sion­er are per­ceived as pub­lic re­la­tions ma­noeu­vres rather than ac­tion­able so­lu­tions to our sit­u­a­tion. These re­spons­es are forth­com­ing every time there is a spike in mur­ders.”

Ma­haraj said some of their mem­bers have scaled down their busi­ness­es and are stay­ing away from the day-to-day run­ning of their op­er­a­tions be­cause of ex­tor­tion threats.

The cham­ber is now call­ing for:

1. Mea­sur­able re­duc­tions in crime on a month-to-month ba­sis.

2. En­hanced po­lice pres­ence and quick re­sponse time.

3. A com­pre­hen­sive se­cu­ri­ty plan de­vel­oped in col­lab­o­ra­tion with busi­ness lead­ers, law en­force­ment, and com­mu­ni­ty stake­hold­ers.

Ma­haraj said, “This cham­ber stands ready to work with the au­thor­i­ties to de­vel­op and im­ple­ment these mea­sures. The time for talk has passed; we need de­ci­sive ac­tion that re­stores con­fi­dence and en­sures the safe­ty and pros­per­i­ty of our busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty.”

Prof De­osaran: It is very wor­ry­ing; we have been look­ing at the trees rather than the for­est

Crim­i­nol­o­gist Prof Ramesh De­osaran has said that the po­lice’s re­cent re­sponse to the blood­shed may be lack­ing. He not­ed that plac­ing law en­force­ment on high alert, paired with low po­lice de­tec­tion and pros­e­cu­tion, can­not abate crime. “It is very wor­ry­ing; we have been look­ing at the trees rather than the for­est. In the ar­chi­tec­ture that gov­erns crime man­age­ment and con­trol, putting the sta­tions on alert may be nec­es­sary but not suf­fi­cient.

“But the de­tec­tion rate, sur­veil­lance, and quick in­tel­li­gence with all the tech­nol­o­gy that we have, as well as an in­crease in street lights and cam­eras, are im­por­tant.”

He said un­til we start work­ing from top to bot­tom, “we have a long way to go to solve these fright­ful mur­der rates.”

Prof De­osaran fur­ther con­tend­ed that the ap­par­ent fear of stalk­ing cit­i­zens ap­pears sim­i­lar to one of the dark­est pe­ri­ods in the coun­try’s his­to­ry. “The pub­lic has nev­er been so con­cerned as it was dur­ing Ju­ly 1990,” he added.

Deputy Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice: There will be in­creased po­lice vis­i­bil­i­ty

Dur­ing an in­ter­view with Guardian Me­dia, Deputy Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice, Ju­nior Ben­jamin stat­ed that in­creased po­lice vis­i­bil­i­ty is ex­pect­ed as the Trinidad and To­ba­go Po­lice Ser­vice switch gears in­to “high alert”.

On Sun­day se­nior po­lice of­fi­cers led by top CoP Er­la Hare­wood-Christo­pher re­vealed that the ser­vice will be on high alert in re­sponse to the uptick in brazen mur­ders.

“We are go­ing to be talk­ing to per­sons and in­ter­act­ing with per­sons, it is where the po­lice ser­vice will be seen and felt and we are ask­ing the pub­lic to have pa­tience with us be­cause we are out there and there are times you might find your­self in road­blocks and so forth we ask­ing you to bear with us be­cause this sit­u­a­tion has called for the po­lice to re­spond and we will re­spond and en­sure safe­ty is the pri­or­i­ty of the Trinidad and To­ba­go Po­lice Ser­vice.”