JENSEN LA VENDE

Se­nior Re­porter

jensen.lavende@guardian.co.tt

The Pro­fes­sion­al Stan­dards Bu­reau (PSB) is now in­ves­ti­gat­ing the theft of over $1 mil­lion worth of mar­i­jua­na from the Barataria Po­lice Sta­tion.

The drugs were seized dur­ing an an­ti-crime ex­er­cise last week. Po­lice claimed the DCP Op­er­a­tions Unit car­ried out the ex­er­cise at the Ma­coya In­dus­tri­al Es­tate around 4.20 pm on Sat­ur­day, based on in­tel­li­gence about an al­leged drug ship­ment.

Po­lice said the drugs con­sist­ed of 82 black pack­ets, four brown pack­ets, two trans­par­ent pack­ets, and one red pack­et.

Three men aged 26 to 42, from Trinci­ty and Ch­agua­nas, were ar­rest­ed for pos­ses­sion of cannabis for the pur­pose of traf­fick­ing.

In a tele­phone in­ter­view with Guardian Me­dia yes­ter­day, DCP Op­er­a­tions Ju­nior Ben­jamin said the theft was a se­ri­ous mat­ter.

“I can tell you it is en­gag­ing the at­ten­tion of the TTPS, and I want to be clear: ab­solute­ly no stone will be left un­turned get­ting to the bot­tom of that. I can let you know that we have sort of en­gaged every sin­gle de­part­ment that will as­sist us in get­ting to the bot­tom of this, in­clud­ing the PSB and all the dif­fer­ent ar­eas.”

Ben­jamin added that the drugs were dis­cov­ered miss­ing on Mon­day dur­ing a rou­tine fol­low-up vis­it to the sta­tion by a po­lice of­fi­cer.

“The in­ves­ti­ga­tor or the of­fi­cer con­cerned went to make checks on it, and up­on mak­ing checks, it was dis­cov­ered, I was told.”

Ben­jamin said that two of­fi­cers—the in­spec­tor in charge of the sta­tion and the prop­er­ty keep­er—have con­trol of the prop­er­ty room from which the drugs re­port­ed­ly dis­ap­peared.