Jensen La Vende

Se­nior Re­porter

jensen.lavende@guardian.co.tt

Down­town Own­ers and Mer­chants As­so­ci­a­tion pres­i­dent Gre­go­ry Aboud says the man who brave­ly chased af­ter a thief in down­town Port-of-Spain and made a cit­i­zen’s ar­rest is an ex­am­ple of what stand-your-ground should be.

But while he is prais­ing the man, iden­ti­fied on­ly as Josi­ah, for re­fus­ing to be a vic­tim of crime, Aboud is al­so call­ing on the Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er and Port-of-Spain May­or to do more to bring an end to snatch and grab crimes in the cap­i­tal city.

On Thurs­day, the man was walk­ing with his girl­friend along the Bri­an Lara Prom­e­nade, In­de­pen­dence Square, around 2 pm, when the ban­dit snatched a piece of jew­ellery off her hand and ran. How­ev­er, Josi­ah sprint­ed be­hind the ban­dit and sub­dued him as on­look­ers and the po­lice rushed to see the com­mo­tion.

The sus­pect was held and tak­en in­to cus­tody by of­fi­cers of the Cen­tral Po­lice Sta­tion.

The in­ci­dent drew wide­spread praise for Josi­ah from cit­i­zens, in­clud­ing Aboud.

Speak­ing to Guardian Me­dia yes­ter­day, the DO­MA pres­i­dent said the man’s ac­tions were a vin­di­ca­tion of the Gov­ern­ment’s plan to im­ple­ment stand-your-ground leg­is­la­tion.

“Well, I would like to say to the coun­try at large that Mr Josi­ah is ex­hibit­ing ex­act­ly what the coun­try has been beg­ging for and what the Prime Min­is­ter and the Gov­ern­ment are talk­ing about,” Aboud said.

“Mr Josi­ah stood his ground and re­fused to ac­cept that he must be­come a vic­tim. And I would say that this is an ex­am­ple to every­body and a vin­di­ca­tion of the Gov­ern­ment’s plan to try and tight­en up the laws with re­spect to stand-your-ground. It’s im­por­tant that peo­ple have a right to de­fend them­selves. And this is a clear in­di­ca­tion of how that right can help pro­tect every­body. Thank you very much, sir.”

Aboud claimed Thurs­day’s in­ci­dent was the lat­est in a string of snatch and grab crimes tak­ing place in the cap­i­tal for the last 10 years, in par­tic­u­lar along the Bri­an Lara Prom­e­nade.

“The pro­lif­er­a­tion of these type of in­ci­dents, which have now be­come ex­treme­ly con­cen­trat­ed in the neigh­bour­hood of the prom­e­nade, be­tween the cathe­dral and the Hen­ry Street in­ter­sec­tion, and per­haps I should say be­tween the cathe­dral and the KFC round­about, the Cipri­ani Round­about, the episodes of that type of snatch and grab have in­creased ex­po­nen­tial­ly in the last two or three months.”

Al­though he com­mend­ed the po­lice for re­cent ar­rests, in­clud­ing the sus­pects in­volved in the at­tempt­ed rob­bery at a casi­no in Port-of-Spain ear­li­er this month, Aboud said more has to be done to en­sure the cap­i­tal is safe.

“The fact is that some­thing can be done about it if there is a will to pro­tect Port-of-Spain, be­cause this ac­tiv­i­ty of snatch­ing peo­ple’s per­son­al be­long­ings, es­pe­cial­ly the great num­ber of episodes that are oc­cur­ring, where women, the el­der­ly, and chil­dren are be­ing at­tacked.”

He said aside from the po­lice, the mat­ter should en­gage the at­ten­tion of the Port-of-Spain May­or Chin­ua Al­leyne.

“One of these op­er­a­tors, the po­lice know him. He is con­stant­ly res­i­dent un­der a fruit stall at the cor­ner of Char­lotte Street and the prom­e­nade ... This guy is sit­ting and wait­ing for all these young men to go and snatch and grab and come back and give him the loot ... Go out­side the book­stores and you will see them wait­ing on the school chil­dren who come with cash to buy school­books. And if that isn’t a crime that should be treat­ed in the harsh­est way, I don’t know what is,” Aboud said.

“It can be re­solved if there is a will to do it, if the may­or would recog­nise it, if the city po­lice of­fi­cials will recog­nise it, if the CID at St Vin­cent Street will recog­nise it. A sim­ple un­der­cov­er op­er­a­tion in which po­lice of­fi­cers from an­oth­er dis­trict are brought to Port-of-Spain to dress in civil­ian clothes, be­cause of­fi­cers in Port-of-Spain are well known by all these guys. This has been go­ing on for too long; more than ten years, we have been plagued by this prob­lem of snatch­ing. I think the Gov­ern­ment should make a spe­cial case of in­creas­ing the penal­ties for this type of ac­tion. This is an at­tack on in­no­cent peo­ple.”

The DO­MA head al­so plead­ed with Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice Al­lis­ter Gue­var­ro to help.

“To the po­lice and to the Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er, please help us pro­tect In­de­pen­dence Square be­tween the cathe­dral and the Cipri­ani round­about.

“It is due for a clean-up. This is the cap­i­tal of our coun­try and it is time to pro­tect the peo­ple who vis­it the cap­i­tal, es­pe­cial­ly in that re­gion, where peo­ple are scared to walk with a hand­bag or to have even a few dol­lars in their pock­et to go and shop at the gro­cery be­cause of what is hap­pen­ing,” he said.