KEVON FELMINE

Se­nior Re­porter

kevon.felmine@guardian.co.tt

While T&T re­mains un­der a State of Emer­gency (SoE) aimed at curb­ing vi­o­lent crime, busi­ness op­er­a­tors along High Street in San Fer­nan­do say rob­beries and pick­pock­et­ing con­tin­ue much as be­fore.

Sev­er­al own­ers and em­ploy­ees yes­ter­day said while busi­ness ac­tiv­i­ty con­tin­ues as usu­al in the city’s main com­mer­cial dis­trict, in­ci­dents such as jew­ellery snatch­ing and rob­beries have not dis­ap­peared, and they be­lieve a stronger and more vis­i­ble po­lice pres­ence is need­ed to de­ter crim­i­nals. Al­though of­fi­cers are fre­quent­ly seen along High Street and near­by streets, some work­ers be­lieve the pa­trols fo­cus large­ly on traf­fic du­ties rather than crime pre­ven­tion.

Greater San Fer­nan­do Area Cham­ber of Com­merce pres­i­dent Ki­ran Singh said the busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty had re­cent­ly been alert­ed to two day­light rob­beries in the down­town area. Speak­ing on CNC3’s The Morn­ing Brew yes­ter­day, Singh said there was a rob­bery ear­li­er this week along Cof­fee Street and an­oth­er on High Street last week. He said the brazen­ness of the crimes was trou­bling, giv­en that the coun­try is cur­rent­ly un­der emer­gency reg­u­la­tions de­signed to sup­press crim­i­nal ac­tiv­i­ty.

Singh sug­gest­ed that many of those com­mit­ting the crimes ap­pear to be young of­fend­ers who are un­afraid of the con­se­quences.

“It is fright­en­ing that we are in a State of Emer­gency, and these guys have no ap­par­ent care or con­cern or fear of the law that un­der a State of Emer­gency, their rights can be tak­en away with­out no­tice or re­gard, and they seem to be tak­ing these brazen chances, and they are us­ing guns, arms and am­mu­ni­tion to com­mit these rob­beries,” Singh said.

While no one was in­jured in the in­ci­dents, Singh said such crimes leave last­ing psy­cho­log­i­cal ef­fects on vic­tims and can de­ter cus­tomers from vis­it­ing the area. He added that crim­i­nals are of­ten able to es­cape on foot even when po­lice pa­trols are in the area.

Al­though the cham­ber does not ex­pect of­fi­cers to be present on every cor­ner, Singh said they have re­peat­ed­ly called for stronger pa­trols, in­clud­ing the use of De­fence Force per­son­nel to sup­port po­lice op­er­a­tions. He not­ed that the army main­tains a base in near­by La Ro­maine and its re­sources could strength­en pa­trols in the city.

Along High Street it­self, some work­ers say they have wit­nessed in­ci­dents that sug­gest crim­i­nals are still op­er­at­ing in the busy com­mer­cial area.

Se­cu­ri­ty guard Naz­im Ish­miel, who works at RT Jew­ellery, be­lieves there should be more of­fi­cers pa­trolling the shop­ping dis­trict fo­cus­ing specif­i­cal­ly on crime rather than traf­fic en­force­ment. He re­called a re­cent rob­bery along High Street in a busy area sur­round­ed by taxi dri­vers and busi­ness­es.

While ac­knowl­edg­ing the State may be seek­ing to raise rev­enue through traf­fic en­force­ment, Ish­miel said the pub­lic’s pri­ma­ry con­cern re­mains safe­ty.

“Not too long ago, right on High Street, a busy place with taxi dri­vers and stores and there was a rob­bery. No po­lice pres­ence, but at a cer­tain time, you see po­lice come out to is­sue tick­ets and di­rect traf­fic or what­ev­er the case might be, but the prob­lem in Trinidad right now is crime,” Ish­miel said.

He said the last joint pa­trols he re­called see­ing were dur­ing the Christ­mas sea­son, when crim­i­nal ac­tiv­i­ty ap­peared to drop. He al­so said the SoE has not no­tice­ably changed con­di­tions on the ground.

“With the po­lice pres­ence, I do not feel safer. I have to safe­guard my own safe­ty.”

Em­ploy­ees at near­by busi­ness­es shared sim­i­lar ob­ser­va­tions about the en­vi­ron­ment along High Street.

At Front­line Deli, work­er Ale­sha Khan re­called see­ing a thief snatch a hand­bag from some­one’s hand be­fore be­ing chased and even­tu­al­ly caught by work­ers in the area, who then con­tact­ed the po­lice. She al­so said she heard about a re­cent rob­bery at a mo­bile phone store and be­lieves such in­ci­dents are not un­usu­al in the busy com­mer­cial dis­trict.

“They (po­lice) should be around more dur­ing the busy hours. I feel like they on­ly come out at night and in the evening. Lunchtime is usu­al­ly the busiest hour, so a lot of things hap­pen. You nev­er know,” Khan said.

How­ev­er, not all busi­ness lead­ers share the view that crime re­mains a ma­jor con­cern in the down­town area.

San Fer­nan­do Busi­ness As­so­ci­a­tion pres­i­dent Daphne Bartlett said she has ob­served a sig­nif­i­cant in­crease in po­lice ac­tiv­i­ty and be­lieves of­fi­cers are do­ing a com­mend­able job main­tain­ing or­der.

Bartlett said she has not re­ceived re­ports of rob­beries or snatch-and-run in­ci­dents re­cent­ly and be­lieves the sit­u­a­tion has im­proved, com­pared with pre­vi­ous years when such crimes were more fre­quent.

“We have not had any rob­beries that I know about. We have not had any snatch and run, the kind of splurge we had in re­cent years, with peo­ple leav­ing the banks and some­body would grab the en­ve­lope and run. I have not heard any of that for about six months,” Bartlett said.

She added that en­force­ment ef­forts have al­so helped bring greater dis­ci­pline to park­ing and traf­fic along High Street and ex­pressed sup­port for Gov­ern­ment’s ap­proach to tack­ling crime un­der the SoE.

Mean­while, po­lice say of­fi­cers from sev­er­al units are ac­tive­ly pa­trolling down­town San Fer­nan­do.

A se­nior of­fi­cer from the South­ern Di­vi­sion said per­son­nel from the San Fer­nan­do Po­lice Sta­tion, South­ern Di­vi­sion Task Force, Crim­i­nal In­ves­ti­ga­tions De­part­ment and the Mu­nic­i­pal Po­lice are con­duct­ing both foot and mo­bile pa­trols in the area. The of­fi­cer re­ject­ed claims that po­lice pres­ence is fo­cused on­ly on traf­fic en­force­ment, say­ing, “If po­lice are on pa­trol and see any crim­i­nal ac­tiv­i­ty, they must at­tend to it as it falls with­in their du­ties.”

The of­fi­cer said da­ta al­so shows a sig­nif­i­cant de­cline in crime across the di­vi­sion in re­cent months, while De­fence Force per­son­nel re­main avail­able to as­sist po­lice op­er­a­tions if need­ed.