Shane Su­perville

Se­nior Re­porter

shane.su­perville@guardian.co.tt

While ac­knowl­edg­ing that a year-end uptick in cer­tain types of crime was ex­pect­ed, ACP in charge of the Crim­i­nal Di­vi­sion, Richard Smith, said height­ened po­lice pres­ence in shop­ping cen­tres is in­flu­enc­ing crim­i­nal pat­terns and urged the pub­lic to ad­just their rou­tines to make them­selves less vul­ner­a­ble tar­gets.

Smith made the re­marks a day af­ter eight sep­a­rate rob­beries were re­port­ed with­in hours on Thurs­day.

In the first in­ci­dent, a 41-year-old busi­ness­man was robbed at his San Juan hard­ware store by two ban­dits just af­ter 10 am. Po­lice said the men stole the busi­ness­man’s gold chain be­fore ran­sack­ing the store. Work­ers raised the alarm, forc­ing the ban­dits to flee be­fore they could take any­thing else.

Less than two hours lat­er, a de­liv­ery­man and his 63-year-old cus­tomer were robbed in San­ta Cruz. Po­lice said the de­liv­ery­man was drop­ping off cas­es of bot­tled wa­ter to the woman’s home on Fos­ter Road when the as­sailants stole $1,500 from him and $4,000 from the woman be­fore flee­ing.

On Thurs­day af­ter­noon, a 32-year-old Freeport man was beat­en and robbed of pow­er tools by ban­dits while at­tempt­ing a U-turn in his Maz­da van on Seuk­er­an Street, San Fer­nan­do.

That same af­ter­noon, a taxi dri­ver was robbed of his ve­hi­cle and $150 by two ban­dits pos­ing as pas­sen­gers in San Juan, while a woman wait­ing for a maxi taxi on the Pri­or­i­ty Bus Route near Beetham Gar­dens was robbed of $700 in cash by an­oth­er woman.

In Ch­agua­nas, around 8 pm, two ban­dits stormed a bar on the South­ern Main Road, Ed­in­burgh Vil­lage, steal­ing jew­ellery from the own­er and $1,500 in cash. Lat­er, at around 10 pm, a busi­ness own­er in Cou­va was robbed of his cell­phone, $1,500, and his blue Hyundai Tuc­son while buy­ing food from a ven­dor.

Speak­ing to Guardian Me­dia yes­ter­day, Smith ref­er­enced the TTPS Christ­mas/Car­ni­val An­ti-Crime plans, im­ple­ment­ed across all ten po­lice di­vi­sions ear­li­er this month, not­ing the in­creased pres­ence and pa­trols in com­mer­cial dis­tricts.

He ac­knowl­edged that crim­i­nals of­ten adapt their op­er­a­tions in re­sponse to po­lice vis­i­bil­i­ty, tar­get­ing ar­eas where sur­veil­lance is low­er.

Smith urged the pub­lic to re­main vig­i­lant and vary their rou­tines to re­duce the risk of be­ing tar­get­ed.

“Make your­selves hard­er tar­gets and change the times you op­er­ate and move. If you han­dle trans­porta­tion or de­liv­er­ies, ad­just your sched­ules and al­ways be aware of your sur­round­ings.

“Change your pat­terns of trans­ac­tion. Look at your staff and pay close at­ten­tion to fam­i­ly or friends who may be aware of your rou­tines and could in­ad­ver­tent­ly put you at risk,” he ad­vised.

He al­so en­cour­aged busi­ness own­ers and cus­tomers, par­tic­u­lar­ly on­line re­tail­ers, to make use of bank trans­fers to avoid car­ry­ing large sums of cash.

Smith not­ed that while some rob­beries in­volve care­ful ob­ser­va­tion by crim­i­nals, oth­ers are op­por­tunis­tic.

“Not every crim­i­nal act is pre­med­i­tat­ed or gang-re­lat­ed. Some­times one or two in­di­vid­u­als just no­tice a soft tar­get—some­one open­ing a gate, fill­ing up at a gas sta­tion, or leav­ing a busi­ness. We all need to stay aware and re­mem­ber that crime can hap­pen to any­one.”

The ACP em­pha­sised that po­lice re­spons­es will in­clude pub­lic ad­vi­sories from the Cor­po­rate Com­mu­ni­ca­tions Unit, as well as in­creased ac­tiv­i­ties across units and di­vi­sions to de­ter crim­i­nal ac­tiv­i­ty.