An­na-Lisa Paul

A se­nior of­fi­cer of the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice (TTPS) is urg­ing the pub­lic to re­set their pri­or­i­ties and en­sure their ve­hi­cles are out­fit­ted with GPS track­ers.

TTPS Me­dia Am­bas­sador act­ing ASP Ra­jesh Lal, who ap­peared on CNC3’s Morn­ing Brew yes­ter­day, al­so ad­vised par­ty-go­ers to ad­just their spend­ing and even their out­fits to avoid be­com­ing a tar­get of crim­i­nal dur­ing the Car­ni­val sea­son.

Al­though he would not say what the TTPS is do­ing to re­duce the cur­rent high in­ci­dence of ve­hic­u­lar theft across the coun­try, Lal warned cit­i­zens not to make them­selves a “hard tar­get.”

“We are ask­ing mem­bers of the pub­lic if they can have those GPS sys­tems in­stalled in the ve­hi­cles,” he said.

Al­though he did not pro­vide sta­tis­tics, Lal claimed the ma­jor­i­ty of stolen ve­hi­cles re­cov­ered had GPS de­vices in­stalled and in some in­stances sus­pects had been ar­rest­ed in the ve­hi­cles.

He said the TTPS is con­tin­u­ing to de­vel­op and en­hance ways to track stolen ve­hi­cles.

“There are cas­es where the po­lice were able to go in­to cer­tain premis­es and find ve­hi­cles that were re­port­ed stolen,” he said.

Ac­cord­ing to Lal, a trend has been ob­served where stolen ve­hi­cles are tak­en to iso­lat­ed lo­ca­tions where the thieves try to find out if it is out­fit­ted with a GPS track­er.

He said the po­lice are work­ing on ways to re­duce the num­ber of ve­hic­u­lar thefts.

He said there has been an in­crease in theft of Hon­da City cars and Kia pick-up truck and not­ed that while ve­hi­cle own­ers spend mon­ey to in­stall mu­sic sys­tems and up­grade rims, they sel­dom got around to in­stalling GPS de­vices.

“You may not get that chance,” he warned.

Lal ad­vised pa­trons at Car­ni­val fetes to park in well-lit ar­eas, in­spect the ve­hi­cle be­fore get­ting in and plan safe and easy ac­cess routes.

He al­so warned per­sons against leav­ing keys, gate re­motes and bills in their ve­hi­cles as they go to par­ty as any­one can glean an ad­dress from the pa­per­work and ac­cess the prop­er­ty, or fol­low the in­di­vid­ual af­ter­wards.

He said vic­tims of ve­hic­u­lar theft should “com­mu­ni­cate with 999 im­me­di­ate­ly.”

He al­so warned against go­ing to par­ties with large amounts of cash and wear­ing flashy jew­el­ry whether it is re­al or not.