The chair­man of the Con­fed­er­a­tion of Re­gion­al Busi­ness Cham­bers (CR­BC), Vivek Char­ran, has de­scribed the coun­try's crime sit­u­a­tion as alarm­ing.

Speak­ing on CNC3’s The Morn­ing Brew on Tues­day, Au­gust 16, Char­ran said the num­ber of home in­va­sions, ex­e­cu­tion-style hits, rob­beries, and mur­ders sug­gest crime is on­ly get­ting worse.

He said the bal­ance of pow­er is mov­ing to­wards peo­ple with il­le­gal firearms.

“We have had meet­ings with the Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice and oth­er se­nior mem­bers of the Po­lice Ser­vice but re­al­ly, the sit­u­a­tion right now is very dire,” he said, adding, “we are very con­cerned.”

Char­ran said: “We think that we are not head­ing in the right di­rec­tion.  Ob­vi­ous­ly, things are get­ting worse when you look at the num­ber of dri­ve-by shoot­ings that we’ve had… and when you look at the fact that many of these things have been hap­pen­ing in broad day­light.”

The CR­BC chair­man says he ac­knowl­edges that the Po­lice Ser­vice can­not solve sit­u­a­tion on its own but main­tains that what is hap­pen­ing now is a mat­ter of na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty.

Mean­while, pres­i­dent of the Su­per­mar­kets As­so­ci­a­tion, Ra­jiv Diptee, points out that crim­i­nals are act­ing with im­puni­ty, as shown in the re­cent shoot­ing in­ci­dent at the Res­i­dence night­club.

“That in­ci­dent at Res­i­dence [night­club] is some­thing that sent shock­waves through the com­mu­ni­ty through­out all of Trinidad and To­ba­go,” he not­ed. 

“We all know it’s one of the high­ly fre­quent­ed night clubs in Port-of-Spain,” Diptee said, “and when an at­tack can take place so brazen­ly, it sug­gests the crim­i­nal el­e­ment has no fear of in­dict­ment or blow­back where jus­tice is con­cerned.”

Diptee al­so re­vealed there has been an in­crease in shoplift­ing of­fences at su­per­mar­kets across the coun­try, and in some cas­es, crimes against su­per­mar­kets have been well-planned and ex­e­cut­ed.

“We’ve seen gangs "We would have seen gangs mov­ing through par­tic­u­lar ar­eas - whether south cen­tral east or west.  What they would do is stay in an area and tar­get su­per­mar­kets with­in that par­tic­u­lar area.  You would have a gang of four or five per­sons mov­ing around stores and cre­at­ing di­ver­sions, to al­low for pil­fer­age to take place."

The su­per­mar­kets boss not­ed that among the more pop­u­lar items pil­fered were ghee, cheese, cof­fee, and ba­by for­mu­la, to name a few.

“These are things nor­mal­ly un­der lock and key. Now, more items have gone un­der lock and key," he said, "and more items have gone be­hind the counter to make it dif­fi­cult [for the shoplifters]…”

Ra­jiv Diptee points out, though, that the busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty con­tin­ues to be proac­tive and is work­ing close­ly with the Com­mu­ni­ty Polic­ing di­vi­sions to en­sure a height­ened aware­ness of this phe­nom­e­non, and busi­ness­es stay alert.

“When they hit a store or su­per­mar­ket in an area, they want to hit as many stores as pos­si­ble be­fore mov­ing on to an­oth­er area,” he ex­plained, not­ing that these gangs have been mov­ing around the coun­try.

“You would have seen a gang in Ma­yaro, and in San­gre Grande, and then in Mara­bel­la.  They are mov­ing through­out the coun­try, and it is some­thing we are very con­cerned about,” Diptee said.

He al­so ob­served the cur­rent court sys­tem can be frus­trat­ing, in terms of hav­ing those ar­rest­ed for such of­fences pros­e­cut­ed in a time­ly man­ner.