Be­tween 2015 and 2022, there were more than 14,663 bur­glar­ies and break-ins in Trinidad and To­ba­go, ac­cord­ing to the Trinidad and To­ba­go Po­lice Ser­vice (TTPS).

Of that to­tal, 2,435 were de­tect­ed, rep­re­sent­ing a de­tec­tion rate of just 16.6 per cent.

In 2022 alone, 1,301 bur­glar­ies and break-ins were re­port­ed. 214 of them were de­tect­ed.

Three weeks ago, the TTPS con­firmed that home in­va­sions, in par­tic­u­lar, are on the in­crease.

Ac­cord­ing to the TTPS' fig­ures, up to that point, a to­tal of 631 break-ins were re­port­ed com­pared to 623 for the same pe­ri­od in 2021.

Act­ing Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Er­la Christo­pher called it an un­for­tu­nate de­vel­op­ment.

And with ter­ri­fy­ing ac­counts of home in­va­sions mak­ing their rounds reg­u­lar­ly in the me­dia and on so­cial me­dia, the ban­dits seemed to have be­come more em­bold­ened than ever.

Some of them have been us­ing drones and binoc­u­lars and pos­ing as com­pa­ny rep­re­sen­ta­tives to scout homes.

Across the coun­try, peo­ple told sto­ries of wak­ing up to the night­mare of men armed with knives and guns in their homes.

They told trau­mat­ic ac­counts of be­ing tied up, threat­ened and beat­en by ban­dits ran­sack­ing their homes for cash and oth­er valu­able items like jew­ellery and al­co­hol.

On De­cem­ber 15, a Cara­pichaima cou­ple was robbed by an armed man who forced his way in­to their Wa­ter­loo Road home.

The cou­ple was or­dered to hand over cash and valu­ables. The ban­dit then fled the scene.

Lat­er in De­cem­ber, a Ca­roni fam­i­ly was left trau­ma­tised af­ter three men en­tered their home, tied them up and robbed them of cash, jew­ellery and al­co­hol.

58-year-old Kissoon Ramesh was in his front yard at around 6.40 am when he turned around and was at­tacked by ban­dits.

One of the men was armed with a gun while the oth­er had cut­lass­es.

The men forced Ramesh in­to the house and tied him, his wife and their three chil­dren, aged 24, 25 and 26, up.

Some cit­i­zens lost their lives in home in­va­sions.

On De­cem­ber 19, art deal­er Mark Pereira was shot dead at his Blan­chisseuse beach house. It was be­lieved that he was killed dur­ing a home in­va­sion.

Al­so, in De­cem­ber, 65-year-old Moo­nan Hard­eo was shot dead dur­ing a rob­bery in Ch­agua­nas.

Hard­eo, his wife and their 38-year-old son were sleep­ing when they awoke to find a man in the house.

Dur­ing a strug­gle, Hard­eo’s son was shot in his leg and Hard­eo was shot in his chest. The shoot­er fled the scene.

There were even re­ports of ban­dits go­ing to lengths that were un­heard of be­fore.

In Oc­to­ber 2022, Mo­han Rat­tan–the own­er of Rat­tan’s Free­zone–was tied up and robbed by two gun­men at his La Ro­main home.

Po­lice said Rat­tan was at home with his wife when the ban­dits en­tered the prop­er­ty.

He be­lieved the men were em­ploy­ees, so Rat­tan opened the gates.

The ban­dits es­caped with two bags of cash and valu­ables in a wait­ing boat.

Some ban­dits were seen on sur­veil­lance footage car­ry­ing out their in­va­sions with­out even both­er­ing to cov­er their faces with masks.

At a time when many peo­ple are al­ready deal­ing with the fall­out from in­fla­tion, some cit­i­zens are forced to spend thou­sands of dol­lars to in­stall se­cu­ri­ty cam­eras, mo­tion sen­sors or re­mote-con­trolled gates.

Oth­ers opt to spend even more to hire se­cu­ri­ty per­son­nel or pur­chase le­gal or il­le­gal firearms to pro­tect their prop­er­ties.