JESSE RAMDEO

Se­nior Re­porter

Pres­i­dent of the Ari­ma Busi­ness As­so­ci­a­tion, Chris­t­ian Ram­per­sad, is lament­ing the spate of killings in the Bor­ough.

This, as two men were killed and a third man was left wound­ed, in a shoot­ing in­ci­dent at Sama­roo Vil­lage, Ari­ma, on Mon­day (Au­gust 5, 2024).

Speak­ing with Guardian Me­dia to­day, Ram­per­sad said the Trinidad and To­ba­go Po­lice Ser­vice (TTPS) needs to re­view its crime fight­ing strate­gies.

Ac­cord­ing to Ram­per­sad, the ex­ist­ing mea­sures—which in re­cent weeks have in­clud­ed in­creased po­lice pa­trols and traf­fic ex­er­cis­es—were not yield­ing the nec­es­sary re­sults.

He said the crime sit­u­a­tion al­so has im­pact­ed Ari­ma's 136th Bor­ough cel­e­bra­tions, sched­uled to take place this week­end.

“We have our Bor­ough cel­e­bra­tions com­ing up this week­end,” Ram­per­sad told Guardian Me­dia.

“Be­cause of crime and the state of crime in Ari­ma, the may­or—against the wish­es of the peo­ple, but I ap­plaud him for be­ing so brave—he has can­celled the J’ou­vert part of the Bor­ough Day,” he re­vealed.

Ram­per­sad fur­ther ad­vo­cat­ed for eas­i­er ac­ces­si­bil­i­ty to li­censed firearms.  He be­lieves that will give cit­i­zens a fight­ing chance as vi­o­lent crimes ap­pear to be on the rise.

“Why do we still have to go through one in­di­vid­ual to get a FUL per­mit pass?  That is the recipe for cor­rup­tion and that has been go­ing on for decades,” the ABA pres­i­dent ar­gued.

“In Ja­maica,” he said, “there is a com­mit­tee set up that goes through and eval­u­ates a per­son’s ap­pli­ca­tion in­de­pen­dent­ly and ef­fec­tive­ly, and it is trans­par­ent.  That is all we are ask­ing for.  That is all the pub­lic is ask­ing for.”

The ABA pres­i­dent al­so be­lieves that leg­is­la­tion must play a greater role in the an­ti-crime strate­gies.