KEVON FELMINEkevon.felmine@guardian.co.tt

The Greater San Fer­nan­do Area Cham­ber of Com­merce wel­comes the ap­point­ment of Er­la Hare­wood-Christo­pher as Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice (CoP)-elect, and they are call­ing on her to be­gin al­lo­cat­ing in­creased re­sources to clamp down on crime.On Fri­day, Par­lia­ment vot­ed unan­i­mous­ly to ap­prove Hare­wood-Christo­pher's nom­i­na­tion as CoP. Cham­ber Pres­i­dent Ki­ran Singh said Hare­wood-Christo­pher was suit­ably qual­i­fied for the job, hav­ing risen up the ranks from a con­sta­ble to act­ing CoP, pro­vid­ing her with a work­ing back­ground in the ser­vice. Singh said that as the first woman CoP, he al­so hopes it in­spires change with­in the TTPS, bal­anc­ing the ills caused by some 'bad ap­ples' with good per­for­mances.
"We no­ticed that the mur­der rate is now in dou­ble fig­ures. We fear this will con­tin­ue, and we may have an­oth­er record year of mur­ders be­fore the year ends. We hope this will be a top pri­or­i­ty item on the agen­da of the Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice for 2023, and we al­so hope to see a clamp down on the il­le­gal en­try of guns and am­mu­ni­tion."

The Greater San Fernando Chamber of Commerce President Kiran Singh

Marvin Smith

Singh said many high-pow­ered firearms en­ter­ing the coun­try from Venezuela and North Amer­i­ca. With the Gov­ern­ment an­nounc­ing plans to ac­quire new mo­bile scan­ners for the ports, the cham­ber ex­pects this to help curb il­le­gal im­ports. How­ev­er, the cham­ber wants Hare­wood-Christo­pher to in­crease re­sources to the Coastal and River­ine Unit to guard the eas­i­ly pen­e­tra­ble bor­ders. In terms of San Fer­nan­do, Singh said the cham­ber wants im­proved lev­els of po­lice pro­tec­tion to co­in­cide with ris­ing crime. "We used to boast, not on­ly in San Fer­nan­do but in the South West­ern penin­su­lar, of be­ing very safe. That is, un­for­tu­nate­ly, not so any­more. We have seen in­creas­es in crime: mur­ders, rob­beries, and home in­va­sions." Singh said the up­per ech­e­lon of the Po­lice Ser­vice pre­vi­ous­ly ad­vised the busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty to close op­er­a­tions ear­ly and not stay out late. How­ev­er, he said that the ban­dits adapt­ed and were now fol­low­ing busi­ness peo­ple home. Sta­tis­tics al­so show in­creased home in­va­sions through­out the coun­try."We fear for our lives. We have bur­glar proof­ing, alarm sys­tems, se­cu­ri­ty guards, se­cu­ri­ty cam­eras and oth­er re­sources, but crim­i­nals are pen­e­trat­ing these safe­ty bar­ri­ers, di­min­ish­ing our com­fort."