Busi­ness own­ers are fear­ful that if im­me­di­ate steps are not tak­en by the au­thor­i­ties, crime will cause the death of Port-of-Spain.

At a meet­ing with se­nior po­lice of­fi­cials from the Port-of-Spain Di­vi­sion yes­ter­day, head of the Down­town Own­ers and Mer­chants As­so­ci­a­tion (DO­MA) Gre­go­ry Aboud said the num­ber of build­ings for sale and va­cant stores along Char­lotte Street is ev­i­dence of the busi­ness slump in the city. How­ev­er, he in­sist­ed the cap­i­tal was worth fight­ing for.

Aboud said street ven­dors and hus­tlers con­tin­ue to ham­per shop­pers and the de­liv­ery of goods, while “snatch­ers” had be­come part of the prob­lem­at­ic land­scape in the east Port-of-Spain dis­trict.

He said ven­dors were on­ly au­tho­rised to sell from Thurs­days to Sat­ur­days but can be found every day along the streets and pave­ments.

He called for po­lice of­fi­cers to be sta­tioned at all the in­ter­sec­tions along Char­lotte Street in the com­ing weeks dur­ing the busy hol­i­day shop­ping sea­son to help re­duce crime and en­cour­age shop­pers to re­turn to the cap­i­tal.

Aboud said the safest times in the city are on cruise ship days as tighter se­cu­ri­ty mea­sures are rolled out when­ev­er tourists are in town.

He urged fel­low busi­ness own­ers to speak up and re­port crime. He warned, “Si­lence is not go­ing to pro­tect you.”

A se­nior of­fi­cer said the Port-of-Spain Mu­nic­i­pal Po­lice is fac­ing a se­vere man­pow­er and ve­hi­cle short­age which pre­vents them from en­forc­ing reg­u­la­tions as they should.

He said the ven­dors are not afraid of the po­lice, “Lock­ing them up every minute doesn’t make sense.”

The of­fi­cer said a counter move is to record the names of ven­dors and sub­mit them to the of­fi­cial re­spon­si­ble for grant­i­ng vend­ing per­mits to en­sure those who had been ar­rest­ed are de­nied per­mis­sion to sell.

The po­lice of­fi­cers at the meet­ing—Snr Supt Ray­mond Thom, ASP Ramesh Sood­een and In­sps Ey­on Toorie and Den­ish Dur­ga – promised to seek an ur­gent meet­ing with the City Hall of­fi­cials.

Sood­een said the po­lice are mak­ing strides to re­duce crime in the cap­i­tal and more than 25 snatch­ers had been ar­rest­ed in the past month in the Char­lotte Street area.

He said the crim­i­nals are con­stant­ly adapt­ing and law­men had to do the same to stay one step ahead.

“We in­tend to cause change to hap­pen,” he said.