Merchants warn of rising crime affecting business

The Down­town Own­ers and Mer­chants As­so­ci­a­tion (DO­MA) is warn­ing that per­sis­tent in­ci­dents of vi­o­lent crime are un­der­min­ing pub­lic con­fi­dence, dis­rupt­ing busi­ness op­er­a­tions and wors­en­ing the eco­nom­ic chal­lenges fac­ing Trinidad and To­ba­go.

In a press re­lease, DO­MA ac­knowl­edged the no­tice­able de­cline in the mur­der rate but said oth­er se­ri­ous crimes con­tin­ued to threat­en cit­i­zens’ safe­ty and were hav­ing an in­creas­ing­ly neg­a­tive im­pact on small and medi­um-sized busi­ness­es.

The as­so­ci­a­tion said fear among mem­bers of the pub­lic about leav­ing their homes was af­fect­ing con­sumer con­fi­dence and spend­ing, ar­gu­ing that this could be con­tribut­ing to the wide­ly held per­cep­tion that the coun­try was in a re­ces­sion.

It said the im­pact was be­ing felt across sev­er­al sec­tors, in­clud­ing man­u­fac­tur­ing, re­tail and the trans­port in­dus­try.

DO­MA iden­ti­fied neck­lace and bracelet rob­beries, at­tacks on peo­ple vis­it­ing banks, as­saults on women at sub­ur­ban shop­ping cen­tres and neigh­bour­hood gro­ceries, and cop­per theft as among the most per­va­sive crimes af­fect­ing the pop­u­la­tion.

While ex­press­ing grat­i­tude to the po­lice for mak­ing ar­rests, the as­so­ci­a­tion main­tained that the sit­u­a­tion was wors­en­ing.

It al­so raised con­cerns about the ex­tent of cop­per theft, claim­ing that air-con­di­tion­ing com­pa­nies were ex­pe­ri­enc­ing short­ages of com­pres­sors and cop­per pipes be­cause of the scale of the prob­lem.

DO­MA ques­tioned whether the re­cent at­tack on the Telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions Ser­vices of Trinidad and To­ba­go (TSTT) ca­ble ware­house in Laven­tille was an­oth­er in­di­ca­tion of the grow­ing de­mand for cop­per among thieves.

The as­so­ci­a­tion al­so de­scribed at­tacks on peo­ple fol­low­ing bank­ing trans­ac­tions as par­tic­u­lar­ly dan­ger­ous, sug­gest­ing that the re­peat­ed in­ci­dents point­ed to an or­gan­ised crim­i­nal op­er­a­tion.

It said such crimes, which ini­tial­ly tar­get­ed peo­ple with­draw­ing cash from au­to­mat­ed teller ma­chines, had ex­pand­ed to in­clude cus­tomers con­duct­ing trans­ac­tions in­side bank­ing halls.

DO­MA called on the au­thor­i­ties to es­tab­lish a ded­i­cat­ed task force to tack­le these of­fences, along­side un­der­cov­er op­er­a­tions tar­get­ing neck­lace and bracelet rob­beries and at­tacks on bank cus­tomers.

The as­so­ci­a­tion not­ed that Trinidad and To­ba­go had pre­vi­ous­ly ad­dressed or­gan­ised rob­beries tar­get­ing pas­sen­gers ar­riv­ing at the air­port through a ded­i­cat­ed un­der­cov­er po­lice op­er­a­tion.

It ar­gued that plain­clothes polic­ing could pro­vide an ef­fec­tive re­sponse to the cur­rent wave of of­fences.

DO­MA ac­knowl­edged that un­em­ploy­ment and eco­nom­ic hard­ship were con­tribut­ing fac­tors in dis­cus­sions about ris­ing law­less­ness. How­ev­er, it warned that crime was al­so mak­ing it hard­er for busi­ness­es to op­er­ate and cre­ate em­ploy­ment.

The as­so­ci­a­tion said ad­dress­ing in­se­cu­ri­ty was there­fore nec­es­sary to sup­port eco­nom­ic re­cov­ery.

It said it re­mained will­ing to col­lab­o­rate with se­cu­ri­ty agen­cies and sup­port­ed proac­tive mea­sures to pro­tect cit­i­zens and safe­guard the coun­try’s eco­nom­ic well­be­ing.