Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice Gary Grif­fith has or­dered in­creased night-time pa­trols as well as covert and overt op­er­a­tions to stop a re­cent spike in break­ings and lar­ce­ny against busi­ness­es in the cap­i­tal city of Port-of-Spain.

The com­mis­sion­er re­vealed there would be an im­me­di­ate start to height­ened se­cu­ri­ty mea­sures when he met with the Port-of-Spain May­or and Pres­i­dent of the Down­town Own­ers and Mer­chants’ As­so­ci­a­tion, Gre­go­ry Aboud yes­ter­day.

Se­nior of­fi­cers of the Port-of-Spain Di­vi­sion al­so at­tend­ed the vir­tu­al talks.

Ac­cord­ing to the po­lice ser­vice, Com­mis­sion­er Grif­fith said among the mea­sures he in­tends to im­ple­ment im­me­di­ate­ly, are the use of Emer­gency Re­sponse Pa­trols for night-time sur­veil­lance of the cap­i­tal, sus­tained an­ti-crime op­er­a­tions and in­tel­li­gence-dri­ven in­ves­ti­ga­tions to as­cer­tain the lev­els of or­gan­i­sa­tion with­in the crim­i­nal el­e­ments.

He al­so sug­gest­ed to DO­MA the pos­si­bil­i­ty of link­ing store­front se­cu­ri­ty cam­eras to the Op­er­a­tional Com­mand Cen­tre for con­tin­u­ous mon­i­tor­ing, ear­ly de­tec­tion of crim­i­nal be­hav­iour and rapid re­sponse to threats.

The meet­ing came af­ter DO­MA ex­pressed con­cern about the num­ber of break­ings as well as the new lev­el of or­gan­i­sa­tion and so­phis­ti­ca­tion in the crimes.

On­ly on Wednes­day night, three male sus­pects who broke in­to a su­per­mar­ket on George Street were caught in­side the es­tab­lish­ment by of­fi­cers of the In­ter-Agency Task Force.