The Ari­ma Busi­ness As­so­ci­a­tion is con­cerned that the re­cent Privy Coun­cil rul­ing that mur­der ac­cused can ap­ply for bail could lead to a fur­ther wors­en­ing of the crime sit­u­a­tion in the coun­try.

In an of­fi­cial state­ment on the is­sue, and the over­all crime sit­u­a­tion in the coun­try, the busi­ness lob­by sounds an alarm:

“It is of grave con­cern to us that the de­vel­op­ment of the court rul­ing for bail on mur­der charges would mean that there are now hun­dreds of charged in­di­vid­u­als who will be out on the streets and hun­dreds of wit­ness­es now in fear of their lives.”

The As­so­ci­a­tion al­so points to in­creas­ing acts of crime and vi­o­lence against busi­ness­es and busi­ness­peo­ple and de­scribes the coun­try as be­ing “un­der siege from the crim­i­nal el­e­ment”.

The busi­ness lob­by is call­ing for a prop­er sys­tem to al­low for ac­qui­si­tion of Firearm Users Li­cences (FULs), and main­tains:

“…law abid­ing cit­i­zens should not be held ran­som or con­tin­ue to be de­fense­less when faced with a re­al and present dan­ger like armed and dan­ger­ous crim­i­nals.”

The fol­low­ing is the full text of the state­ment from the Ari­ma Busi­ness As­so­ci­a­tion…

Trinidad & To­ba­go is just a few weeks away from cel­e­brat­ing 60 years as an in­de­pen­dent na­tion, and Ari­ma is cel­e­brat­ing 134 years as a Roy­al Char­tered Bor­ough. The Ari­ma Busi­ness As­so­ci­a­tion is ask­ing “is there re­al­ly any­thing to cel­e­brate?”

Hon­est­ly as a peo­ple, we should re­al­ize that we are un­der siege from the crim­i­nal el­e­ment, not just as a busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty in Ari­ma, but al­so as or­di­nary cit­i­zens of our na­tion. Ari­ma is now be­ing classed as the epi­cen­tre of crime and is bad­ly wound­ed how­ev­er no com­mu­ni­ty has been able to es­cape this scourge. Every day we awak­en to news of a fel­low cit­i­zen be­ing robbed, beat­en and killed. We are call­ing on the au­thor­i­ties to treat this as a pub­lic health emer­gency now! We need a sol­id crime plan im­ple­ment­ed in the short, medi­um and long term.

It is of grave con­cern to us that the de­vel­op­ment of the court rul­ing for bail on mur­der charges would mean that there are now hun­dreds of charged in­di­vid­u­als who will be out on the streets and hun­dreds of wit­ness­es now in fear of their lives. Apart from this, the fre­quen­cy with which busi­ness own­ers are tar­get­ed is fright­en­ing while those in au­thor­i­ty de­bate on root cause analy­sis.

We are heart­ened to see that the Prime Min­is­ter and the Gov­ern­ment have ac­knowl­edged that crime is out of con­trol and are aware that this is and al­ways has been a na­tion­al is­sue. Crime has en­grained it­self in the fab­ric of our so­ci­ety and it is weav­ing it­self through every­thing we hold dear. Cor­rup­tion, nepo­tism and dis­hon­esty rule the day and we stand by and watch it eat away at our na­tion. Peo­ple are in fear for their homes, their pos­ses­sions but more than that, their very lives.

Added to the crim­i­nal ac­tiv­i­ty is that of prae­di­al lar­ce­ny. At a time when food se­cu­ri­ty is at the fore­front of con­ver­sa­tions, pro­duc­ers of food are un­der con­sid­er­able at­tack. From home in­va­sions and per­son­al phys­i­cal at­tacks to theft, not just of mar­ket ready live­stock, but al­so prime breed­ing stock, the core of any farm­ing op­er­a­tion and the har­vest­ing of pro­duce be­fore they can be le­git­i­mate­ly brought to mar­ket. The scourge of crime on the farm­ing com­mu­ni­ty is a crip­pling one. Add to that the lack of re­sponse from the au­thor­i­ties, where the main law en­force­ment agency re­spon­si­ble for an­swer­ing calls to help farm­ers is un­der-re­sourced, of­ten with no ve­hi­cles to re­spond to calls, if the calls are an­swered in the first place. If we are se­ri­ous about se­cur­ing our food sup­ply, these is­sues must be ad­dressed.

The Ari­ma Busi­ness As­so­ci­a­tion does not take com­fort in the fact that we ap­pear no clos­er to the ap­point­ment of a Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice than we were a few months ago. It would be naive of us to not rec­og­nize the short­com­ings that ex­ist and while we agree that there are so­cial is­sues that need to be ad­dressed, law abid­ing cit­i­zens should not be held ran­som or con­tin­ue to be de­fense­less when faced with a re­al and present dan­ger like armed and dan­ger­ous crim­i­nals.

Sev­er­al years ago, the TTPS com­plained that the crim­i­nals had more ad­vanced firearms than they did, and the tax­pay­ers (aka law abid­ing cit­i­zens and tax­pay­ing busi­ness­es) paid the bill to equip our po­lice of­fi­cers with the nec­es­sary tools. Prison Of­fi­cers have al­so re­quest­ed firearms, and while we see the need to grant them such, this was an ex­pense of the tax­pay­ing cit­i­zens.

To­day, we the peo­ple who paid the bills are call­ing for a to­tal re­form of the process by which we are grant­ed the le­gal use to car­ry firearms to pro­tect our life, loved ones and prop­er­ty. The fact is clear—Laws need to be amend­ed! We de­mand a fair, trans­par­ent, eq­ui­table and ef­fec­tive method to eval­u­ate and dis­trib­ute the Firearm Users Li­cens­es (FULs). One such sys­tem ex­ists in Ja­maica, and we are sure there are many more ex­am­ples across the globe. We have been deal­ing with ris­ing crime in the coun­try and these in­ci­dents have be­come more fre­quent, more vi­o­lent and, it is ev­i­dent that if cit­i­zens are not giv­en the means to pro­tect them­selves, we shall soon be over­whelmed by crim­i­nals.

The crim­i­nal el­e­ments in our so­ci­ety are op­er­at­ing with more au­thor­i­ty than the law-abid­ing cit­i­zens and it is clear that this needs to be re­versed soon­er rather than lat­er. The au­thor­i­ty to is­sue a Firearm Users Li­cense should not and ought not, con­tin­ue to be held by one in­di­vid­ual. While we play with the sta­tis­tics of the sit­u­a­tion, lives are be­ing lost.

We, the law-abid­ing cit­i­zens need a fight­ing chance to pro­tect our­selves against the crim­i­nal el­e­ment. We the peo­ple de­serve a trans­par­ent and le­git­i­mate process by which we can ac­cess, if we choose to, a FUL.