Last No­vem­ber, Guardian Me­dia’s In­ves­ti­ga­tions Desk re­port­ed on the gum ram­page plagu­ing T&T af­ter the Trinidad and To­ba­go Po­lice (TTPS) made sig­nif­i­cant gun hauls.

To date, no one was ar­rest­ed for the cache of ar­se­nal that in­clud­ed AR-15s, M16s, mi­ni Uzis, 50 cal­i­bre ri­fles and 12-gauge shot­guns.

Il­le­gal weapons have been flood­ing the streets of T&T for the past decade.

While it is tra­di­tion­al­ly be­lieved that guns are en­ter­ing T&T through the coun­try’s porous bor­ders, in our con­tin­ued re­port­ing we learnt how arms traf­fick­ers are us­ing le­gal ports of en­try.

Shane Su­perville

Se­nior Re­porter

shane.su­perville@guardian.co.tt

Most peo­ple may not think that the pack­age con­tain­ing their hu­mid­i­fi­er, tele­vi­sion stand or oth­er in­no­cent house­hold items is shipped along­side a dan­ger­ous weapon ca­pa­ble of mass mur­der in the same con­tain­er.

But this is the re­al­i­ty that con­tin­ues to con­front lo­cal au­thor­i­ties and re­mains a con­cern to ship­ping in­dus­try stake­hold­ers.

Speak­ing with Sun­day Guardian on con­di­tion of anonymi­ty, one source who is close to the ship­ping in­dus­try said he was alarmed at the spate with which high-pow­ered guns and am­mu­ni­tion con­tin­ue to slip past cus­toms of­fi­cials in Trinidad.

On the af­ter­noon of Feb­ru­ary 9, of­fi­cers of the North-Cen­tral Di­vi­sion went to a bond in Trinci­ty where they found four dis­man­tled AR 15s and six mag­a­zines hid­den in a pack­age con­tain­ing a hu­mid­i­fi­er. No one was ar­rest­ed in con­nec­tion with the seizure.

This ship­ment of weapons was one of the first no­tice­able seizures made by po­lice in 2024.

In April 2021, a joint team of po­lice and Cus­toms and Ex­cise Di­vi­sion of­fi­cers found and seized 30 guns and 762 rounds of am­mu­ni­tion in­side a bond pack­age at the Pi­ar­co In­ter­na­tion­al Air­port.

The dis­cov­ery of these weapons con­firmed sus­pi­cions that high-pow­ered guns, of­ten fea­tured in bloody lo­cal gang feuds, were not be­ing shipped via shady, un­con­ven­tion­al means but along­side le­git­i­mate car­go through es­tab­lished ports.

Such dis­cov­er­ies have al­so added to con­cerns over whether cur­rent bor­der se­cu­ri­ty mech­a­nisms in place are suf­fi­cient to ef­fec­tive­ly clamp down on the in­flux of il­le­gal weapons.

The of­fi­cial told the Sun­day Guardian that while more strin­gent search­es and checks have of­ten been called for, it is eas­i­er said than done.

“Peo­ple will say we scanned that con­tain­er. So how do you check every tiny box if some­one or­dered cof­fee or tea; did you send a snif­fer dog?

“Mean­while, there are ten or 15 con­tain­ers be­hind wait­ing, so when are those pack­ages go­ing to leave the port?

“Tech­nol­o­gy has to play a more in­te­gral role in the man­age­ment of our bor­ders from scan­ning to sim­ple record-keep­ing.”

But even if tech­nol­o­gy is in­te­grat­ed in­to more ac­tiv­i­ties along­side the Cus­toms and Ex­cise Di­vi­sion of­fi­cers, it may not be enough, the source said.

The re­source­ful and cre­ative crim­i­nal or­gan­i­sa­tions are find­ing new ways of cam­ou­flag­ing weapons, which in­clude dis­man­tling weapons and dis­guis­ing the com­po­nents in pack­ages con­tain­ing house­hold items of a sim­i­lar shape.

“If you take out a bar­rel of a firearm in­side a pack­age with steel pipes of sim­i­lar length and di­am­e­ter will an X-Ray pick that up on what is a re­al pipe for plumb­ing and the bar­rel of a ri­fle?

An­oth­er source has dis­closed that traf­fick­ers smug­gle guns in pack­ages marked as house­hold items and are care­ful to en­sure the weight record­ed on the box is the weight of the item placed in the pack­age so as not to arouse sus­pi­cion.

This at­ten­tion to de­tail, the source said, is a big part of the suc­cess of arms traf­fick­ers.

“Let’s not as­sume the tech­nol­o­gy is all that it needs to fil­ter out what’s com­ing in pack­ages,” a source said

“What’s al­so need­ed is the train­ing of staff to recog­nise ir­reg­u­lar­i­ties, how to look and what they should be look­ing for.”

They al­so sug­gest­ed up­grad­ing the Cus­toms and Ex­cise Act to keep pace with the cur­rent de­mands of nar­co and arms traf­fick­ing.

Fab­ri­cat­ed names on pack­ages

Ac­cord­ing to sta­tis­tics from the TTPS Crime and Prob­lem Analy­sis (CA­PA) branch, as of Feb­ru­ary 19, po­lice have found and seized 71 guns com­pared to 111 guns for the same pe­ri­od in 2023.

At least one po­lice source said that it may be too ear­ly to cel­e­brate as few­er guns be­ing found may not nec­es­sar­i­ly equate to few­er guns en­ter­ing T&T.

He notes this drop in guns be­ing dis­cov­ered could like­ly mean that traf­fick­ers have lim­it­ed the num­ber of guns they ship through cer­tain ports that they deem “too hot”, ow­ing to the at­ten­tion be­ing paid to pack­ages at cer­tain bond ware­hous­es.

Re­fer­ring to the gun seizures in 2021, the of­fi­cer said it was un­like­ly that traf­fick­ers would at­tempt to trans­port such a large quan­ti­ty of weapons through a le­gal port again, not­ing how ob­vi­ous it would be to check.

“That was a se­ri­ous em­bar­rass­ment on the part of the Cus­toms and Ex­cise Di­vi­sion as to how the weapons came in. But a lull in the num­ber of weapons found could mean that the traf­fick­ers are sim­ply switch­ing up their ap­proach. They will ex­plore dif­fer­ent routes to see where there are weak­ness­es they can ex­ploit.”

Pre­vent­ing the guns from reach­ing the coun­try is one thing, but what about the in­ves­ti­ga­tions that be­gin once a cache of weapons is found?

While the pack­ages of­ten car­ry names and ad­dress­es, the of­fi­cer said in­quiries of­ten lead to dead ends as the names are usu­al­ly fab­ri­cat­ed.

“As part of the in­quiry, we vis­it the ad­dress­es where these pack­ages were des­tined to go, but all the time the per­sons that live there are not the per­son whose name is on the box.

“But this is part of the crim­i­nal in­ves­ti­ga­tion that goes along­side the sci­en­tif­ic analy­sis and pro­cess­ing of the gun with bal­lis­tics and foren­sic test­ing to see where the gun could have orig­i­nat­ed from.”

Po­lice sources posit that through­out the 1980s and 1990s, il­le­gal weapons en­ter­ing T&T were “sec­ond-hand” Cold War-era guns ob­tained from con­flicts in Latin Amer­i­ca.

How­ev­er, in re­cent times, the weapons be­ing brought in are not on­ly new­er but al­so seem to be Amer­i­can-made.

Dur­ing a me­dia brief­ing in ear­ly Feb­ru­ary, Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley an­nounced that he met with of­fi­cials from the CIA and FBI to dis­cuss se­cu­ri­ty con­cerns, not­ing that in­ter­na­tion­al crim­i­nals took a “lik­ing” to T&T.

In an­oth­er me­dia con­fer­ence days lat­er, Dr Row­ley re­marked that peo­ple ship­ping the guns to T&T may be ex­pat cit­i­zens or the rel­a­tives of lo­cals.

“The peo­ple who are buy­ing those guns know Trinidad and To­ba­go, are prob­a­bly even cit­i­zens or fam­i­ly mem­bers of cit­i­zens or they see us as a place where they can make a prof­it so we have a lot in com­mon with the US au­thor­i­ties,” he had said.

In Oc­to­ber 2022, it was re­port­ed that two T&T cit­i­zens and a US cit­i­zen were charged for send­ing guns through a Pi­ar­co couri­er.

Tri­nis Tevin O’Bri­an Oliv­er and Jameal Ka­ia Phillip, who were liv­ing in Flori­da, were joint­ly charged with con­spir­a­cy to smug­gle goods from the US.

The charges were laid dur­ing an an­nounce­ment from US at­tor­ney Roger Hand­berg.

The in­dict­ment al­so al­leged that Oliv­er and Phillip un­law­ful­ly shipped firearms, firearm com­po­nents and re­lat­ed items from Flori­da to T&T be­tween 2019 and 2022.

One se­nior of­fi­cer said in­ci­dents of Trinida­di­ans liv­ing abroad or the rel­a­tives of Trinida­di­ans abroad send­ing firearms to lo­cals might be a big part of the is­sue of gun traf­fick­ing.

“This is a re­al thing that has been go­ing on for years. It’s through col­lab­o­ra­tions with US au­thor­i­ties we are able to find and make these kinds of in­roads in in­quiries.”

The of­fi­cer not­ed that in cer­tain south­ern US dis­tricts like Flori­da, where leg­is­la­tion over firearm own­er­ship may be more re­laxed, some peo­ple might have tak­en ad­van­tage of this by buy­ing weapons for ship­ping to T&T.

It is in this re­gard the of­fi­cer is op­ti­mistic that the pro­posed strength­ened col­lab­o­ra­tions with the FBI and CIA can yield some ben­e­fits through more in­tel­li­gence gath­er­ing and shar­ing.

But the as­sis­tance from for­eign agen­cies can on­ly go so far and must be sup­port­ed by lo­cal au­thor­i­ties.

Po­lice: We are work­ing as­sid­u­ous­ly, col­lab­o­rat­ing with oth­er agen­cies

The Pi­ar­co In­ter­na­tion­al Air­port is lo­cat­ed in the Pi­ar­co Po­lice Sta­tion dis­trict which is part of the North-Cen­tral Di­vi­sion.

Speak­ing with the Sun­day Guardian, head of the di­vi­sion Snr Supt Richard Smith said while it was a chal­lenge, he as­sured that dis­trict au­thor­i­ties took the is­sue of il­le­gal firearm in­ter­dic­tion se­ri­ous­ly.

“The air­port is an im­por­tant in­stal­la­tion that we have in our di­vi­sion so we have col­lab­o­ra­tion with our air­port se­cu­ri­ty, we have month­ly stake­hold­er meet­ings with the air­port se­cu­ri­ty, we have month­ly stake­hold­er meet­ings with the fire sta­tion of­fi­cer who al­so is in charge of that area at the air­port.

“We have the sta­tion com­man­der in the Pi­ar­co Po­lice Sta­tion who is one of my best com­man­ders there, we have mock ex­er­cis­es as it re­lates to any in­ci­dent that may oc­cur, and we con­tin­ue to col­lab­o­rate with the Air­ports Au­thor­i­ty and oth­er units that are lo­cat­ed at the air­port.”

Smith said among the agen­cies in close com­mu­ni­ca­tion with the po­lice was the Cus­toms and Ex­cise Di­vi­sion.

“We want to en­sure that firearms do not come through the air­port. If it does, it has to be a small amount, and we should be able to dis­cov­er it at any point in time when it comes through, so that is the kind of as­sur­ance we want to give mem­bers of the pub­lic that we are, in fact, work­ing as­sid­u­ous­ly and col­lab­o­rat­ing with the oth­er agen­cies.”

While Smith is con­fi­dent in the abil­i­ty of the po­lice and part­ner agen­cies to re­spond to the threat of il­le­gal firearms traf­fick­ers, it re­mains a ma­jor is­sue for all cit­i­zens.