The T&T Po­lice Ser­vice (TTPS) has stepped up ef­forts to elim­i­nate the ex­tor­tion of pri­vate cit­i­zens and busi­ness own­ers by crim­i­nal el­e­ments.

Se­nior Su­per­in­ten­dent in the North Cen­tral Di­vi­sion Richard Smith made the com­ment yes­ter­day, as he not­ed that in one case they had dealt with, a cou­ple ex­tort­ed a busi­ness own­er 134 times. How­ev­er, he said the TTPS was see­ing some suc­cess in curb­ing the ac­tiv­i­ty.

Speak­ing dur­ing a me­dia brief­ing at the Min­istry of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty, Port-of-Spain, Smith ex­plained just how they were go­ing about erad­i­cat­ing this par­tic­u­lar crime, which was de­fined as de­mand­ing mon­ey by men­ace. He said when funds switch hands, this was now be­ing re­ferred to as a rob­bery.

In 2022, Smith said a to­tal of 16 re­ports of de­mand­ing mon­ey by men­ace were re­ceived, of which sev­en were solved and per­sons ar­rest­ed.

While the num­ber of re­ports bal­looned to 162 in 2023, Smith shocked the na­tion as he re­vealed, “One hun­dred and thir­ty-four of these re­ports were com­mit­ted by two per­sons. A hus­band and wife team that ex­tort­ed mon­ey from one vic­tim.”

That mat­ter was record­ed in the South­ern Di­vi­sion, with 134 charges be­ing laid against the cou­ple. A fur­ther ten peo­ple were charged that year for the same of­fence.

He said a to­tal of 19 re­ports have so far been re­ceived for 2024, with nine charges be­ing laid against two per­sons up to last Mon­day, which rep­re­sent­ed a 40 per cent de­tec­tion rate.

Say­ing in­ves­ti­ga­tions tak­ing place were not sim­ple, Smith ex­plained, “We have these cow­ards hid­ing be­hind phones and mak­ing these de­mands, so it is not so easy to in­ves­ti­gate.”

Ad­mit­ting they were see­ing the alarm­ing re­ports in the me­dia, Smith added, “We can­not imag­ine what is tak­ing place, we need to get the re­ports so I am urg­ing mem­bers of the pub­lic and the busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty to make the re­port so we can ac­tu­al­ly in­ves­ti­gate them.”

In ad­di­tion, the NCD head said in or­der to tack­le these crimes, they need­ed to get the co-op­er­a­tion of the vic­tims, which was some­thing they were not get­ting.

Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Er­la Hare­wood-Christo­pher said a strate­gic, de­lib­er­ate and ded­i­cat­ed team had been as­sem­bled un­der Smith to ad­dress the is­sue of ex­tor­tion.

She as­sured, “We know we are chal­lenged and that there is a fear in re­port­ing but know that if you call Mr Smith, you will have that di­rect com­mu­ni­ca­tion and con­fi­den­tial­i­ty in your re­ports.”

Smith di­rect­ed per­sons to con­tact 797-3150 to make re­ports.

On the is­sue of how the po­lice were ad­dress­ing home in­va­sions, Smith said, “We are try­ing to ed­u­cate the pub­lic against hard­en­ing your­selves as tar­gets.”

In ad­di­tion, he said they were look­ing to im­prove com­mu­ni­ty de­fence mech­a­nisms such as neigh­bour­hood watch groups; rolling out the Ea­gle Eye Project by set­ting up cam­eras in strate­gic lo­ca­tions across all com­mu­ni­ties; and oth­er fea­tures which he promised would be a sur­prise for crim­i­nals.