Shane Su­perville

Se­nior Re­porter

shane.su­perville@guardian.co.tt

Months of sur­veil­lance and in­tel­li­gence gath­er­ing led to the seizure of a quan­ti­ty of high-pow­ered ri­fles and hun­dreds of rounds of am­mu­ni­tion, in­clud­ing ar­mour-pierc­ing rounds, and gun­pow­der yes­ter­day.

The cache of weapons, which in­clud­ed 35 guns, 100 mag­a­zines and hun­dreds of rounds of am­mu­ni­tion, was put on full dis­play dur­ing an emer­gency me­dia brief­ing at the Po­lice Ad­min­is­tra­tion Build­ing in Port-of-Spain.

The ex­hibits had to be dis­played on three large ta­bles and two small­er one to suf­fi­cient­ly dis­play all of the items seized.

Of­fi­cers were still count­ing the rounds of am­mu­ni­tion, which in­clud­ed 5.56 and 7.62 cal­i­bre am­mu­ni­tion.

Speak­ing af­ter the weapons and am­mu­ni­tion were gath­ered and dis­played, Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Er­la Hare­wood-Christo­pher com­mend­ed the of­fi­cers for their ef­forts in track­ing and find­ing the weapons.

De­scrib­ing the dis­cov­ery of the weapons as “his­toric”, she said the re­cent seizure was tes­ta­ment to the abil­i­ty of the po­lice to fight crime.

Re­fer­ring to the cal­i­bre of am­mu­ni­tion seized, she said the dan­ger posed by crim­i­nals was re­al and hoped the ex­er­cise had re­newed a sense of hope and con­fi­dence in the po­lice.

“I want to high­light to the na­tion­al com­mu­ni­ty the type of weapons and the type of am­mu­ni­tion that was found.

“We have AR15s, we have M16s, mi­ni Uzis, 50-cal­i­bre ri­fles and 12-gauge shot­guns.”

Hare­wood-Christo­pher al­so is­sued a stern warn­ing to crim­i­nals that law­less­ness would not be tol­er­at­ed.

“I want to take this op­por­tu­ni­ty to ad­vise the crim­i­nal el­e­ments in this coun­try that the po­lice will not be daunt­ed and will not be in­tim­i­dat­ed by threats. The at­tack on our pub­lic of­fi­cials will not be tol­er­at­ed and we will al­ways fight back.”

Snr Supt Roger Alexan­der, of the In­ter Agency Task Force (IATF), who su­per­vised the ex­er­cise, said it be­gan around 2 pm and in­volved of­fi­cers mak­ing a trek through two and a half miles of bush in Can­gre­jal Vil­lage to get to a shed where the weapons and am­mu­ni­tion were found.

He said de­spite the threats faced along the way, the dis­cov­ery of the weapons was proof of the po­lice’s com­mit­ment to pro­tect­ing cit­i­zens.