Downtown merchants warn of surge in night burglaries

The Down­town Own­ers and Mer­chants As­so­ci­a­tion of Port of Spain has is­sued an ur­gent ad­vi­so­ry to busi­ness­es fol­low­ing a se­ries of night­time shopfront bur­glar­ies across the city.

In a state­ment, the as­so­ci­a­tion said the at­tacks have been oc­cur­ring on a reg­u­lar ba­sis and con­tin­ue de­spite an alert cir­cu­lat­ed to the down­town busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty on Tues­day, De­cem­ber 30. It said some op­er­a­tors have not tak­en the rec­om­mend­ed pre­cau­tions and sev­er­al premis­es have been tar­get­ed more than once.

The as­so­ci­a­tion re­port­ed an­oth­er shopfront bur­glary at about 3.00 am on Jan­u­ary 7, 2025, at #27 Fred­er­ick Street, and said the in­ci­dent un­der­scored the need to height­en aware­ness of the night­time threat fac­ing Port of Spain.

Prop­er­ty own­ers with­in city lim­its were re­mind­ed that street-side show win­dows must be se­cured with grills and shut­ters, even on well-lit and high­ly vis­i­ble streets. The as­so­ci­a­tion said lam­i­nat­ed shat­ter­proof glass does not pro­vide ad­e­quate pro­tec­tion against the cut­ting tools be­ing used, in­clud­ing bolt cut­ters and cord­less elec­tric cut­ting discs.

It al­so warned that sev­er­al bur­glar­ies have been car­ried out through first-floor glass win­dows, and said win­dows above street-side canopies must be prop­er­ly se­cured.

Ac­cord­ing to the as­so­ci­a­tion, the pat­tern of bur­glar­ies sug­gests per­pe­tra­tors are tar­get­ing spe­cif­ic items. Be­fore Christ­mas, cell­phone, tech­nol­o­gy and toy stores were af­fect­ed. Since Christ­mas, shops sell­ing blan­kets, sheet sets, or­na­ments and high-fash­ion gar­ments, par­tic­u­lar­ly ladies tops and jeans, have been tar­get­ed. Busi­ness­es sell­ing these items were urged to take ad­di­tion­al pre­cau­tions.

The as­so­ci­a­tion said it has been in con­tact with po­lice au­thor­i­ties at City Hall and the May­or’s Of­fice, and con­firmed that the mat­ters are un­der ac­tive in­ves­ti­ga­tion by the Crim­i­nal In­ves­ti­ga­tion De­part­ment, based at the St Clair Po­lice Sta­tion.

Any­one with in­for­ma­tion or sus­pi­cions was ad­vised to con­tact the CID at 612-2470.

The as­so­ci­a­tion said it has es­ca­lat­ed its con­cerns to the Trinidad and To­ba­go Po­lice Ser­vice and as­sured busi­ness own­ers of its height­ened at­ten­tion to the night­time se­cu­ri­ty sit­u­a­tion in down­town Port of Spain.