PoS cops promise more patrols after uptick in copper thefts

Shane Su­perville

Po­lice in the Port-of-Spain Di­vi­sion say they have al­so re­port­ed a no­tice­able in­crease in cop­per thefts, in­clud­ing telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions ca­bles and are ini­ti­at­ing height­ened po­lice ac­tiv­i­ties in a bid to quell fur­ther van­dal­ism and thefts of valu­able equip­ment.

The re­sponse comes one day af­ter pres­i­dent of the Down­town Own­ers' and Mer­chants' As­so­ci­a­tion (DO­MA), Gre­go­ry Aboud, raised con­cerns over the theft of cop­per ma­te­ri­als from busi­ness­es in the cap­i­tal, in­clud­ing a re­port­ed $2 mil­lion worth of pri­vate­ly owned air con­di­tion­ing and elec­tri­cal equip­ment.

Re­spond­ing to Guardian Me­dia Ltd's ques­tions through the TTPS Cor­po­rate Com­mu­ni­ca­tions Unit on Wednes­day, head of the Port-of-Spain Di­vi­sion Snr Supt Ray­mond Thom con­firmed that pre­lim­i­nary da­ta re­flect­ed an in­crease in re­ports of cop­per theft dur­ing the first half of the year com­pared to the same cor­re­spond­ing pe­ri­od in 2025.

Thom not­ed that while re­ports of cop­per thefts peaked in April and May of this year, with six re­ports re­ceived in each month be­fore even­tu­al­ly dip­ping to on­ly one re­port in Au­gust.

"This tra­jec­to­ry high­lights the ef­fec­tive­ness of re­cent en­force­ment, through vig­i­lance is re­quired to en­sure the de­cline is sus­tained," Thom said in a state­ment.

He fur­ther dis­ag­gre­gat­ed the da­ta, not­ing that with­in the Port-of-Spain Di­vi­sion, cop­per thefts was usu­al­ly con­cen­trat­ed in the Besson Street Po­lice Sta­tion Dis­trict (Laven­tille, Beetham, Sea Lots), with 50 % of re­ports com­ing from these ar­eas.

The Bel­mont Po­lice Sta­tion Dis­trict ac­count­ed for 19 % of re­ports re­ceived, while the St Clair and Wood­brook Po­lice Sta­tion dis­tricts showed "min­i­mal ac­tiv­i­ty" in that par­tic­u­lar crime.

Thom al­so not­ed that as of Wednes­day af­ter­noon, two peo­ple have been ar­rest­ed and charged for the theft of cop­per, which ac­counts for a 6 % de­tec­tion rate in the crime.

He al­so promised that as en­quiries con­tin­ue, the Port-of-Spain Di­vi­sion will con­tin­ue var­i­ous strate­gies aimed at re­duc­ing such in­ci­dents.

"The safe­ty of busi­ness­es and pa­trons in the cap­i­tal re­mains a pri­or­i­ty. Ef­fec­tive im­me­di­ate­ly, the Port-of-Spain Di­vi­sion will in­ten­si­fy mo­bile and foot pa­trols in tar­get­ed com­mer­cial ar­eas be­tween 6 pm and 6 am, de­ploy sur­veil­lance teams to mon­i­tor ac­cess points to rooftops and ser­vice ar­eas, col­lab­o­rate with util­i­ty providers and busi­ness­es to se­cure cop­per as­sets in­clud­ing elec­tri­cal ca­bles, en­gage scrap met­al deal­ers with­in the di­vi­sion to en­sure com­pli­ance with the Scrap Met­al Act and to track the sale of cop­per, Meet with DO­MA and busi­ness own­ers this week to co-or­di­nate crime pre­ven­tion mea­sures and launch aware­ness cam­paigns in sta­tion dis­tricts to en­cour­age re­port­ing and de­ter op­porunis­tic thefts."

Thom al­so urged the pub­lic, in­clud­ing busi­ness own­ers, to re­port any in­stance of cop­per theft to as­sist the po­lice in their de­tec­tion and en­force­ment cam­paign.