The Government of Trinidad and Tobago is facing a concerted private sector protest over what the business community says is its acute vulnerability to the present bloody urban crime wave which, apart from its manifestation in cold-blooded murders and confrontations among heavily armed gangs, has also been having a severely debilitating effect on a private sector now seized with an acute attack of jitteriness. Expressions of concern over the targeting of business owners in encounters that have led to both loss of life and robberies have been mixed with frontal attacks on the ability of the state to stem the tide of the prevailing crime spree, with criticism of the state’s response targeting the country’s Prime Minister, Dr. Keith Rowley, directly, as well as Trinidad and Tobago’s first ever female Commissioner of Police, Erla Harewood-Christopher.