Charles Kong Soo

As the Min­istry of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty airs its Christ­mas aware­ness cam­paign for shop­pers, ASP Joanne Archie of the Po­lice Ser­vice's com­mu­ni­ca­tions unit is ad­vis­ing mem­bers of the pub­lic to ex­er­cise due vig­i­lance while shop­ping dur­ing the fes­tive sea­son. She al­so pro­vid­ed sev­er­al Christ­mas safe­ty tips.

Archie said the Christ­mas hol­i­days were just a few days away, and the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice con­tin­ued to ad­vise mem­bers of the pub­lic to ex­er­cise safe­ty dur­ing this pe­ri­od. She said while Christ­mas was a sea­son for car­ing and shar­ing, if you feel com­pelled to do­nate, be aware of fic­ti­tious so-called 'needy cas­es' which peo­ple with ul­te­ri­or mo­tives may ap­proach you to sup­port.

Archie said, "The Street Col­lec­tions (Con­trols) states that when so­lic­it­ing do­na­tions a per­mit from the Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice must be first ob­tained and the ap­pli­cant must write to the CoP not lat­er than one month be­fore the date on which it was pro­posed to make the col­lec­tion."

Archie said if women used ba­bies and chil­dren to com­mit crimes such as shoplift­ing or scop­ing out a place and the po­lice have ev­i­dence of them en­dan­ger­ing the life of the child, the moth­er could be charged and the courts could make any de­ci­sion re­lat­ed to the wel­fare of the child. She said the sce­nario of the hap­less rob­bery vic­tim hav­ing to go to a cer­tain po­lice sta­tion be­cause the crime oc­curred on one side of the street was a thing of the past, as peo­ple can now go to any po­lice sta­tion through­out the coun­try to make a re­port.

Mean­while, Deputy Gen­er­al Man­ag­er of mar­ket­ing and com­mu­ni­ca­tions at the Pub­lic Trans­port Ser­vice Cor­po­ra­tion (PTSC) Carl Ramdeo said the cor­po­ra­tion's Park and Ride Sys­tem in­tro­duced in Port-of-Spain and San Fer­nan­do for the Christ­mas sea­son was the so­lu­tion to the traf­fic con­ges­tion and wreck­ing prob­lem in both cities.Ramdeo said it would take some time, how­ev­er, for the sys­tem to be in­grained in com­muters be­cause of the con­ve­nience, cost fac­tor, pay­ing $20 for the ser­vice ver­sus $500 for the wreck­er.

He said Park and Ride would al­so be rolled out for Car­ni­val 2014.Shaf­fick Mo­hammed, a pro­vi­sion ven­dor on Char­lotte Street, warned shop­pers, es­pe­cial­ly women, not to come in town with gold, as ban­dits were snatch­ing chains and cell­phones.He said there was a vis­i­ble po­lice and army pres­ence, and plain­clothes po­lice al­so that were work­ing out, but there were still "lit­tle skir­mish­es."A mer­chant said she was con­cerned about the spate of gun vi­o­lence re­cent­ly in the city.

Be wary of:

�2The fake jew­el­ry scam, the con-artist says the jew­el­ry he's sell­ing came from a bro­ken-in jew­el­ry store.

�2Pick­pock­ets

�2Los­ing mon­ey in three-card game in­stead of us­ing the mon­ey for shop­ping for the fam­i­ly.

�2 Don't buy from peo­ple who are sell­ing rea­son­ably priced Scotch whiskey on the streets. They are fill­ing the bot­tles with green tea.

�2 Look out for coun­ter­feit mon­ey.

SAFE­TY TIPS

�2Be care­ful when open­ing your wal­lets and purs­es to hand over cash.

A busi­ness­man who trains in mod­ern mar­tial arts ad­vised that wal­lets be se­cured by a chain, dur­ing a snatch and run of a woman's purse or hand­bag one tac­tic was for her to open her bag and scat­ter the con­tents on the floor.

He said time was the crim­i­nal's en­e­my; if he stopped to pick up valu­ables, she can ei­ther run away, be able to de­fend her­self, or get some­one's at­ten­tion.

�2Avoid wear­ing ex­ces­sive jew­el­ry or car­ry­ing large sums of cash whilst shop­ping, es­pe­cial­ly in crowd­ed shop­ping ar­eas.

�2Place pack­ages in the trunk of your car to avoid break-ins.

�2Do not use video ar­cades, toy stores, or a movie the­atre as a ba­by sit­ter, preda­tors may be on the prowl look­ing for un­at­tend­ed kids at this time of year. If you must take a child shop­ping with you, al­ways keep them with­in your view. If you send your chil­dren to an­oth­er de­part­ment of the store, be sure that an adult is with them. A name tag with per­ti­nent in­for­ma­tion may be at­tached to the child's cloth­ing.