Sascha Wil­son

For 25 min­utes dur­ing the ear­ly hours of yes­ter­day morn­ing, a Debe fam­i­ly was held hostage and ter­rorised in their own home by four gun­men.

The fam­i­ly, who owns the Has­sanali Dou­bles Shed at the pop­u­lar dou­bles food strip in Debe, was robbed of sev­er­al items, in­clud­ing mon­ey, jew­ellery, cell­phones, four pairs of sneak­ers and oth­er items.

Us­ing crow­bars, the gun­men forced their way in­to the home around 3 am. The crash­ing sound jolt­ed the fam­i­ly out of their sleep. The gun­men tied up the home­own­ers, a 66-year-old woman and her hus­band.

The sus­pects as­sault­ed their son and de­mand­ed mon­ey and the com­bi­na­tion to their safe dur­ing the in­ci­dent.

When Guardian Me­dia vis­it­ed the home on Fri­day, the fa­ther and son were re­luc­tant to do an in­ter­view. They, how­ev­er, showed the bro­ken front and bed­room doors.

Trau­ma­tised by the or­deal, they asked that their names be with­held. “They were go­ing through the cup­boards. Imag­ine they even take four pairs of sneak­ers. They came from the back. They knew where every­thing was,” the son lament­ed.

Fa­reed Has­sanali, a rel­a­tive, who lives near­by, said he did not hear any­thing dur­ing the in­ci­dent.

“Them work yes­ter­day and them come home and peo­ple may be see and come in the night. They take pass­port every­thing, my broth­er could tell you, but noth­ing big that they can’t car­ry,” said Has­sanali.

Lament­ing the crime sit­u­a­tion, he said, “Far as I see, this coun­ty just gone be­cause you not safe any­more.”

Has­sanali, how­ev­er, be­lieves that the coun­try would have been safer un­der the charge of for­mer po­lice com­mis­sion­er Gary Grif­fith.

“We need Gary back. For me, he was do­ing a good job,” he said.

There have been sev­er­al home in­va­sions in re­cent weeks.

On Mon­day, an 80-year-old Bar­rack­pore pen­sion­er was tied up, beat­en and burnt dur­ing a rob­bery at his home. In an­oth­er in­ci­dent, a 44-year-old woman of Corinth Hills, Ste Madeleine, was chopped on her hand dur­ing a home in­va­sion on Wednes­day.

Last week, busi­ness­man Mo­han Rat­tan, own­er of Rat­tan’s Free­zone, and his wife were tied up and robbed by two gun­men who broke to their La Ro­main home.

On Oc­to­ber 3, po­lice al­so shot and killed of sev­en sus­pects as they were flee­ing the scene af­ter rob­bing a Chi­nese restau­rant own­er and his fam­i­ly at the gat­ed Krista Park com­mu­ni­ty in Ma­yaro.

Ac­cord­ing to in­for­ma­tion pro­vid­ed by the T&TPS, there have been 451 home in­va­sions for the year so far. The high­est num­ber of in­ci­dents were in the North­ern Di­vi­sion, with 98 re­ports, fol­lowed by Cen­tral Di­vi­sion with 96 and South­ern Di­vi­sion record­ed 87. For the year so far, To­ba­go has had on­ly sev­en re­ports.

Last year, a to­tal of 597 home in­va­sions were re­port­ed. The North­ern Di­vi­sion had the most re­ports, 134, while the South­ern and Cen­tral Di­vi­sions had 104 in­ci­dents re­spec­tive­ly. To­ba­go had 26 re­ports, the least num­ber of re­ports for that year.

Mean­while, San Fer­nan­do Greater Cham­ber of Com­merce pres­i­dent Ki­ran Singh says mem­bers of the busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty are grave­ly con­cerned over the in­crease in home in­va­sions with­in re­cent times.

He said, "Most busi­ness own­ers feel that they have ex­haust­ed pre­cau­tion­ary mea­sures such as cam­eras, elec­tron­ic gates and bur­glar proof­ing. Some are still ea­ger­ly await­ing ap­provals for FUL's while oth­ers who are al­ready in pos­ses­sion of firearms feel that they are still dis­ad­van­taged be­cause ban­dits are now mov­ing with au­to­mat­ic and semi­au­to­mat­ic weapons."

He said most mem­bers are feel­ing a sense of hope­less. " It seems as if we are be­ing at­tacked on a near dai­ly ba­sis. These in­ci­dences oc­cur at times when we are at home, which sup­pos­ed­ly is 'the safest place to be'," he lament­ed. While the cham­ber con­tin­ues to ad­vise their mem­bers to be cau­tious, he said so­lu­tions to the crime cri­sis con­tin­ue to elude the pro­tec­tive ser­vices.

He said it seems that they now have to do "what­ev­er is nec­es­sary and with­in our pow­er to pro­tect our­selves and our fam­i­lies."

Call­ing for stiffer penal­ties for crimes such as bur­glary and firearm-re­lat­ed of­fences, he said, "The ju­di­cial process al­so needs to be ex­pe­dit­ed. As it stands, there are not enough time­ly con­se­quences for these of­fend­er."

Singh said the time has al­so come for a coun­try­wide 24 hour joint army-po­lice pa­trol, sup­port­ed by a na­tion­wide net­work of CCTV cam­eras and drone tech­nol­o­gy to ap­pre­hend the wrong do­ers.

While busi­ness peo­ple are charged with the tremen­dous re­spon­si­bil­i­ty of cre­at­ing and sus­tain­ing em­ploy­ment, Singh said the crim­i­nals at­tack them with an at­ti­tude of im­puni­ty.