Never Leave Significant Cash in a Vehicle With a Companion

Leaving a companion in a vehicle while you step away briefly feels low-risk, but if that vehicle contains large sums of cash or high-value electronics, you are handing temporary, unsupervised access to someone who may not be sufficiently known to you. On Monday afternoon on Independence Square South, Port of Spain, a 23-year-old man parked his vehicle and left a female companion inside while he purchased food from a nearby restaurant — a stop of approximately 15 minutes. When he returned, the woman had vanished along with TT$20,000 in cash from the glove compartment, an Apple iPad, and an Apple Watch — a total loss of TT$27,000. The glove compartment is not a secure location; it requires no key and is accessible to anyone seated in the vehicle. The brief absence created the window and the unsupervised access created the opportunity. Treating cash and high-value items as items you carry rather than items you store in the vehicle is the only reliable protection against this scenario.

Steps to follow:

• If you are carrying a significant cash sum, treat it as an item on your person — take it with you when you exit the vehicle, even for a brief stop, regardless of who remains inside.
• Keep high-value electronics in a bag that you carry rather than loose on the back seat or in the glove compartment; a bag that leaves with you eliminates the opportunity for theft.
• The glove compartment is not a secure storage location — it has no lock in most vehicles or can be opened while the car is running; never rely on it for anything you cannot afford to lose.
• If you must leave valuables in the vehicle, use the boot and ensure it cannot be opened from inside the cabin; remove the boot-release lever if the vehicle has a physical one accessible from the rear seat.
• Never leave a running vehicle unattended or semi-attended in a public area; doing so with valuables inside multiplies the risk of both theft and a vehicle takeover.
• Limit who you bring into your vehicle when carrying cash or high-value goods to people you know and trust beyond casual acquaintance; opportunistic theft by companions is a pattern that a brief association cannot reliably protect against.