Shane Su­perville

Se­nior Re­porter

shane.su­perville@guardian.co.tt

Po­lice in the Port-of-Spain Di­vi­sion say they have record­ed a no­tice­able in­crease in cop­per theft, in­clud­ing the theft of telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions ca­bles, and are step­ping up po­lice ac­tiv­i­ties to curb fur­ther van­dal­ism and theft of valu­able equip­ment.

The re­sponse comes a day af­ter Down­town Own­ers’ and Mer­chants’ As­so­ci­a­tion (DO­MA) pres­i­dent Gre­go­ry Aboud raised con­cerns about 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 ques­tions from Guardian Me­dia through the TTPS Cor­po­rate Com­mu­ni­ca­tions Unit yes­ter­day, head of the Port-of-Spain Di­vi­sion Snr Supt Ray­mond Thom con­firmed that pre­lim­i­nary da­ta showed an in­crease in re­ports of cop­per theft dur­ing the first half of this year com­pared with the cor­re­spond­ing pe­ri­od in 2025.

Thom not­ed that re­ports of cop­per theft peaked in April and May, with six re­ports record­ed in each month, be­fore dip­ping to one re­port in Au­gust.

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

He fur­ther broke down the da­ta, not­ing that with­in the Port-of-Spain Di­vi­sion, cop­per theft was usu­al­ly con­cen­trat­ed in the Besson Street Po­lice Sta­tion Dis­trict, which in­cludes Laven­tille, Beetham and Sea Lots, ac­count­ing for 50 per cent of re­ports.

The Bel­mont Po­lice Sta­tion Dis­trict ac­count­ed for 19 per cent of re­ports, while the St Clair and Wood­brook po­lice sta­tion dis­tricts showed “min­i­mal ac­tiv­i­ty” in re­la­tion to the crime.

Thom al­so not­ed that, as of yes­ter­day af­ter­noon, two peo­ple had been ar­rest­ed and charged with cop­per theft, rep­re­sent­ing a six per cent de­tec­tion rate for the crime.

He said that as en­quiries con­tin­ue, the Port-of-Spain Di­vi­sion will im­ple­ment 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 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 op­por­tunis­tic thefts,” Thom said.

Thom al­so urged mem­bers of the pub­lic, in­clud­ing busi­ness own­ers, to re­port any in­stances of cop­per theft to as­sist po­lice with their de­tec­tion and en­force­ment ef­forts.