Shane Su­perville

Se­nior Re­porter

shane.su­perville@guardian.co.tt

Pres­i­dent of the Down­town Own­ers’ and Mer­chants As­so­ci­a­tion (DO­MA), Gre­go­ry Aboud, is ap­peal­ing for ur­gent po­lice in­ter­ven­tion to quell what he de­scribed as in­creas­ing­ly brazen and re­source­ful crim­i­nals tar­get­ing cop­per equip­ment.

Aboud warned that fail­ure to prop­er­ly ad­dress a re­cent spate of cop­per thefts dam­ag­ing equip­ment and in­fra­struc­ture at busi­ness­es in down­town Port-of-Spain could ham­per eco­nom­ic ac­tiv­i­ty in the city.

In a me­dia re­lease yes­ter­day, DO­MA de­scribed the ex­tent of the thefts, not­ing that large, bulky equip­ment was be­ing tar­get­ed, sug­gest­ing the crimes were be­ing car­ried out in an or­gan­ised and co-or­di­nat­ed man­ner.

DO­MA said more than $2 mil­lion worth of pri­vate­ly owned air-con­di­tion­ing and elec­tri­cal equip­ment had been stolen from down­town Port-of-Spain busi­ness­es in the past eight weeks.

“En­tire in­stal­la­tions in­clud­ing coils and com­pres­sors are be­ing re­moved and cart­ed away.

“This in­cludes ma­jor equip­ment, each weigh­ing sev­er­al hun­dred pounds which is serv­ing large, mul­ti-storey build­ings. This is not the usu­al work of pet­ty crim­i­nal drug ad­dicts,” the re­lease said.

When con­tact­ed for com­ment, Aboud said a firm po­lice re­sponse was need­ed to pre­vent fur­ther thefts.

He said the thefts were not on­ly an op­er­a­tional in­con­ve­nience but were al­so cost­ly to re­pair, with some in­sur­ance providers un­able to cov­er dam­age to rooftop equip­ment.

“The in­sur­ance com­pa­nies, the in­sur­ers of the city of Port-of-Spain have in­di­cat­ed that rooftop equip­ment is not cov­ered un­der the in­sur­ance poli­cies cov­er­ing prop­er­ties in Trinidad and To­ba­go, so this is a sit­u­a­tion of not on­ly great in­con­ve­nience and dan­ger, but al­so of great cost, be­cause A. these peo­ple are mov­ing around at night with­out any fear of be­ing caught and B. when they loot and de­stroy all this equip­ment, there is no com­pen­sa­tion from this type of bur­glary or lar­ce­ny.”

Aboud said DO­MA has been in con­tact with the Port-of-Spain City Cor­po­ra­tion and the Trinidad and To­ba­go Po­lice Ser­vice.

He said there was a “dras­tic in­crease” in the num­ber of cop­per equip­ment items de­stroyed and stolen over the In­de­pen­dence Day hol­i­day week­end.

He hoped the sit­u­a­tion would raise aware­ness among oth­er busi­ness­es while high­light­ing the need for au­thor­i­ties to in­ter­vene.

Speak­ing with Guardian Me­dia yes­ter­day, a po­lice of­fi­cer in the Port-of-Spain Di­vi­sion, who spoke on con­di­tion of anonymi­ty, said po­lice were aware of the scale of cop­per theft.

Ac­cord­ing to the of­fi­cer, ef­forts were un­der­way to pre­vent the theft of cop­per, but this was chal­leng­ing giv­en the sheer vol­ume of re­ports re­ceived.

Two peo­ple were re­cent­ly charged with the theft of cop­per ma­te­ri­als from a rooftop air-con­di­tion­ing unit.

The of­fi­cer said work was un­der­way to pre­vent fur­ther thefts, not­ing that in some cas­es, peo­ple ar­rest­ed in re­la­tion to such thefts were ei­ther em­ploy­ees of the same busi­ness­es they were tar­get­ing or close­ly af­fil­i­at­ed with em­ploy­ees. This, he sug­gest­ed, in­di­cat­ed that the thieves had in­ter­nal in­for­ma­tion about the lay­out and lo­ca­tion of valu­able equip­ment.