Ot­to Car­ring­ton

A to­tal of 7,000 il­le­gal guns were de­stroyed at the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice Acad­e­my in St James on Mon­day, as part of an ex­er­cise to de­stroy con­fis­cat­ed, un­ser­vice­able and ob­so­lete weapons, am­mu­ni­tion and ex­plo­sives.

The ex­er­cise was al­so part of the sign­ing of a mem­o­ran­dum of un­der­stand­ing be­tween Cari­com and IM­PACS and the Mines Ad­vi­so­ry Group (MAG).

Speak­ing at the cer­e­mo­ny, Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Fitzger­ald Hinds said, “Over the last ten years, 7,000 firearms have been re­cov­ered by law en­force­ment. And in the last five years, over 4,000, or 90,000 rounds of am­mu­ni­tion, have been seized and we now have these in our stock­pile. This project is de­signed to de­stroy them safe­ly so that they will not con­tin­ue to cre­ate the may­hem that brought them to our at­ten­tion in the first place.”

He added that in­tel­li­gence ob­ser­va­tions in­di­cat­ed that in T&T, “we host prob­a­bly about 12,000 il­le­gal firearms in Trinidad and To­ba­go as we speak.”

He not­ed, “There are con­cerns about le­gal firearms in Trinidad and To­ba­go that can pos­si­bly, and in some cas­es, ac­tu­al­ly have made their way in­to il­le­gal hands and ef­forts. So we un­der­stand ful­ly well the se­ri­ous threat that we face and the crit­i­cal im­por­tance of a project like this for the de­struc­tion in the way that is en­vis­aged.

“The goal, there­fore, of the phys­i­cal se­cu­ri­ty and stock­pile man­age­ment as­sess­ment was to ob­jec­tive­ly eval­u­ate the cur­rent state of our na­tion­al stock­piles and to make rec­om­men­da­tions for im­prove­ment in this phys­i­cal se­cu­ri­ty and safe­ty.”

“These rec­om­men­da­tions will be con­gru­ent with im­proved phys­i­cal se­cu­ri­ty and man­age­ment prac­tices de­signed to curb the di­ver­sion of legal­ly ac­quired firearms and am­mu­ni­tion in­to the hands of crim­i­nals. Pur­suant to this as­sess­ment, the most ur­gent item for at­ten­tion and ac­tion was the de­struc­tion of oth­er­wise con­fis­cat­ed and ob­so­lete weapons, am­mu­ni­tion and ex­plo­sives that are cur­rent­ly held in our stor­age fa­cil­i­ties,” the Min­is­ter added.

Act­ing Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Mc Don­ald Ja­cob mean­while said, “The Trinidad and To­ba­go Po­lice Ser­vice ful­ly sup­ports this ini­tia­tive be­cause it will re­move the per­cep­tion that the seized firearms are be­ing re­cy­cled by po­lice of­fi­cers. It al­so re­duces the op­por­tu­ni­ties for of­fi­cers to be tempt­ed to car­ry out this ad­verse act of re­turn­ing firearms to the streets in the hands of crim­i­nal el­e­ments. This ven­ture is an­oth­er pos­i­tive sig­nal of the Trinidad and To­ba­go Po­lice Ser­vice’s in­ten­tions to ad­dress the vi­o­lent crime sit­u­a­tion in the coun­try, by re­duc­ing the pos­si­bil­i­ties of these firearms reach­ing, re­turn­ing to the streets

Re­gion­al Di­rec­tor of MAG, Adam Ko­morows­ki, said, “The project we’re launch­ing to­day with the Gov­ern­ment of Trinidad and To­ba­go is the first step in planned long term co­op­er­a­tion be­tween Cari­com and MAG in re­sponse to needs of states across the re­gion. The part­ner­ship will sup­port Cari­com coun­tries in their ad­her­ence to com­mit­ments un­der the UN pro­gramme of ac­tion to pre­vent com­bat and erad­i­cate the il­lic­it trade in small arms and light weapons in all its as­pects.”