Two days af­ter three rob­beries were re­port­ed in the Cen­tral Di­vi­sion with­in a three-hour pe­ri­od, ACP South-Cen­tral Wayne Mys­tar says the po­lice have re­dou­bled their ef­forts to not on­ly sup­press such in­ci­dents, but al­so em­pow­er com­mu­ni­ties to cre­ate safer neigh­bour­hoods.

Be­tween 4.15 am and 7 am on Sun­day, there were three sep­a­rate rob­beries.

In the first in­ci­dent, a taxi dri­ver was robbed by a pas­sen­ger who sprayed his eyes with an un­known liq­uid be­fore push­ing him out of the car and dri­ving off on Joyce Street, Ch­agua­nas.

In the sec­ond in­ci­dent, a 65-year-old woman and a 51-year-old man were tied up by ban­dits who ran­sacked their Ca­can­dee Street, Fe­lic­i­ty home, steal­ing elec­tron­ics and a quan­ti­ty of lo­cal and US cur­ren­cy be­fore es­cap­ing.

Last­ly, a 64-year-old man and his em­ploy­er were beat­en and tied up by ban­dits at the em­ploy­er’s Mon­roe Road, Cunu­pia, busi­ness­place.

The busi­ness­man’s wife and four chil­dren, who were in the house, which is part of the busi­ness­place, were al­so tied up by the ban­dits and locked in a room as they stole cash and valu­ables from the home.

Re­spond­ing to Guardian Me­dia’s ques­tions via What­sApp on Tues­day, Mys­tar, who has re­spon­si­bil­i­ty for the South­ern, South-West­ern and Cen­tral Di­vi­sions, de­scribed the lat­est in­ci­dent in­volv­ing chil­dren as “deeply trou­bling,” and said Snr Supt Ve­na But­ler of the Cen­tral Di­vi­sion was treat­ing these mat­ters with the “ut­most ur­gency.”

He said po­lice have in­ten­si­fied their ac­tiv­i­ties to tack­le such in­ci­dents of crime in ar­eas iden­ti­fied as “hotspot ar­eas”, but al­so res­i­den­tial com­mu­ni­ties, which have shown vul­ner­a­bil­i­ty to such crimes.

“Our of­fi­cers are en­gag­ing in di­rect com­mu­ni­ty out­reach, in­creased in­tel­li­gence-gath­er­ing and strate­gic tar­get­ing of known crim­i­nal el­e­ments.

“Crime scene units and the Crim­i­nal In­ves­ti­ga­tions De­part­ment have been mo­bilised to fast-track these in­ves­ti­ga­tions, and the Child Pro­tec­tion Unit has been en­gaged re­gard­ing the in­ci­dent in­volv­ing mi­nors.”

But in ad­di­tion to the di­vi­sion’s “in-house” re­sources, Mys­tar’s oth­er spe­cialised units would be in­tro­duced to as­sist in crime-fight­ing ex­er­cis­es.

“The In­ter-Agency Task Force (IATF) and Ca­nine Sup­port to in­crease vis­i­bil­i­ty and de­ter­rence.

“Drone sur­veil­lance and mo­bile com­mand posts are al­so be­ing con­sid­ered in ar­eas prone to vi­o­lent prop­er­ty crimes.”

Mys­tar sought to as­sure the pub­lic that the po­lice were work­ing to dis­rupt crim­i­nal net­works and en­cour­aged com­mu­ni­ties to be vig­i­lant and re­port any sus­pi­cious ac­tiv­i­ty.

When con­tact­ed for com­ment on Mon­day, Ch­agua­nas May­or Faaiq Mo­hammed said the spate of rob­beries on Sun­day was trou­bling, not­ing that crime in Cen­tral Trinidad had been a grow­ing con­cern.

He said he con­tin­ued to meet with the di­vi­sion­al po­lice and oth­er se­cu­ri­ty stake­hold­ers to im­prove safe­ty in their com­mu­ni­ties.

“As May­or, I am work­ing close­ly with the Se­nior Su­per­in­ten­dent of the Cen­tral Di­vi­sion and the As­sis­tant Su­per­in­ten­dent of Po­lice of the Mu­nic­i­pal Po­lice to in­crease po­lice pres­ence and strength­en our re­sponse on the ground.

“We re­main hope­ful through these com­bined ef­forts, T&T will be safer.”

Mo­hammed said he was al­so op­ti­mistic that ef­forts from the gov­ern­ment would be suf­fi­cient to curb crime.