Raphael John-Lall

(with re­port­ing by Mark Bas­sant and Rhon­dor Dowlat)

The il­le­gal flow of guns that has fu­elled bold gang­land mur­ders and oth­er killings in re­cent months is be­ing fa­cil­i­tat­ed to a large ex­tent by com­plic­it cus­toms of­fi­cers and those in law en­force­ment. Iron­i­cal­ly, some of these of­fi­cers, tasked with pre­vent­ing con­tra­band from en­ter­ing the coun­try, are in­stead turn­ing a blind eye af­ter al­leged­ly ac­cept­ing bribes, al­low­ing the free flow of the weapons in­to the hands of em­bold­ened crim­i­nals on the streets.

Cus­toms of­fi­cers re­vealed the il­le­gal op­er­a­tions be­ing car­ried out by some of their col­leagues, while Act­ing Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice Mc­Don­ald Ja­cob not­ed that the ma­jor­i­ty of il­le­gal guns flow­ing in­to T&T are not just com­ing through the porous bor­ders, but right un­der the eyes of Cus­toms and Ex­cise at the le­gal ports.

The Cus­toms and Ex­cise Di­vi­sion, which falls un­der the Min­istry of Fi­nance, has come un­der the mi­cro­scope as a ma­jor play­er in the il­le­gal gun trade.

While 7,000 il­le­gal guns were seized from crim­i­nals and de­stroyed at the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice (TTPS) Acad­e­my in Sep­tem­ber, thou­sands more have made their way in­to the coun­try and con­tin­ue to flood the streets. While Min­is­ter of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Fitzger­ald Hinds es­ti­mat­ed in Ju­ly that there are at least 12,000 il­le­gal firearms on the streets, In­de­pen­dent Sen­a­tor Paul Richards speak­ing in the Sen­ate in 2019 said a "cred­i­ble" study done by the Uni­ver­si­ty of Syd­ney had found that there were more than 32,000 il­le­gal guns on the streets in T&T.

The true fig­ure is un­known as thou­sands of guns con­tin­ue to come in un­hin­dered, leav­ing cit­i­zens, from young to old, as sit­ting ducks.

Hinds fur­ther es­ti­mat­ed, ac­cord­ing to re­cent sta­tis­tics from the TTPS, that 87 per cent of mur­ders in T&T are firearm re­lat­ed. The ma­jor­i­ty of the 519 homi­cides re­port­ed so far this year by po­lice have been gun-re­lat­ed, and high-pow­ered weapons have be­come the norm in sev­er­al re­cent ex­e­cu­tion-style killings. The ease of ac­cess to these high-pow­ered weapons has caused se­ri­ous con­cern for the po­lice, the Gov­ern­ment, and cit­i­zens alike.

Di­verse sec­tors–from the po­lice, crim­i­nol­o­gists and se­cu­ri­ty ex­perts to the busi­ness sec­tor–are re­quest­ing that the ac­tiv­i­ties of the Cus­toms and Ex­cise Di­vi­sion be mon­i­tored close­ly.

The Trinidad and To­ba­go Man­u­fac­tur­ers’ As­so­ci­a­tion (TTMA) in a me­dia re­lease in Ju­ly called for the Cus­toms and Ex­cise Di­vi­sion to work to­geth­er with oth­er agen­cies to de­crease the num­ber of firearms on the streets.

A few months lat­er, in Sep­tem­ber, Ja­cob rec­om­mend­ed year­ly poly­graph test­ing (lie de­tec­tor test­ing) for those who work in Cus­toms and Ex­cise and con­stant vet­ting of these peo­ple as well as those who work in in­tel­li­gence.

Crim­i­nol­o­gist Dau­rius Figueira in an in­ter­view with the Sun­day Guardian last week called for an im­me­di­ate in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­to the op­er­a­tions at Cus­toms and Ex­cise to stem the flow of il­le­gal weapons in­to T&T, while Strate­gic Se­cu­ri­ty Con­sul­tant Garvin Heer­ah al­so hint­ed that the Di­vi­sion needs to be shak­en up as the "bad ap­ples" must be weed­ed out.

On Fri­day night, pres­i­dent of the Ch­agua­nas Cham­ber of In­dus­try and Com­merce Richie Sookhai said there was an ur­gent need to place port se­cu­ri­ty un­der the Min­istry of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty to weed out cor­rup­tion and pre­vent il­le­gal guns from en­ter­ing the le­gal ports of en­try.

He said that cus­toms of­fi­cers have a mam­moth role to play in curb­ing the im­por­ta­tion of il­le­gal con­tra­band in­to T&T.

Hinds, speak­ing to the Sun­day Guardian yes­ter­day, said that the Gov­ern­ment wants to in­tro­duce leg­is­la­tion that would en­sure manda­to­ry poly­graph tests and "in­tegri­ty test­ing" not on­ly for em­ploy­ees of the Cus­toms and Ex­cise Di­vi­sion but oth­er branch­es of the pub­lic ser­vice and law en­force­ment. He said that he had

When he was a min­is­ter in the Min­istry of the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al, he draft­ed a bill for poly­graph­ing and the use of oth­er mod­ern tech­niques for in­tegri­ty test­ing. (see Box)

Fa­cil­i­tat­ing the trade

Sev­er­al cus­toms of­fi­cials, speak­ing on the con­di­tion of anonymi­ty with the Sun­day Guardian, ad­mit­ted that not on­ly are their col­leagues in­volved in cor­rupt ac­tiv­i­ties at the ports and air­ports, but that oth­er law en­force­ment per­son­nel are help­ing to fa­cil­i­tate the trade. In some cas­es, po­lice of­fi­cers trans­port the weapons in marked po­lice ve­hi­cles to drop them off to un­der­world boss­es and their foot sol­diers.

One se­nior cus­toms of­fi­cer said that em­ploy­ees are en­gaged in il­le­gal ac­tiv­i­ties.

"There are cer­tain­ly peo­ple in the sys­tem do­ing il­le­gal things. There was a la­dy cus­toms of­fi­cer re­cent­ly who al­leged­ly ex­am­ined a bar­rel in Cen­tral and said there was noth­ing and let it go. In­ci­den­tal­ly, that bar­rel had firearms and am­mu­ni­tion. Then there were two oth­er bar­rels that she cleared that po­lice had un­der sur­veil­lance and af­ter that, she was sup­pos­ed­ly trans­ferred from there."

An­oth­er cus­toms of­fi­cer spoke about the dis­turb­ing trends at the Di­vi­sion.

"That sit­u­a­tion with the fe­male cus­toms of­fi­cer is re­al­ly dis­turb­ing. There are cer­tain­ly no prop­er checks and bal­ances in place. From what we heard in this par­tic­u­lar in­stance, the po­lice lat­er went to the cus­toms of­fi­cer's home af­ter she al­leged­ly left the coun­try with­out seek­ing the prop­er per­mis­sion.

"We have to al­ways in­form the rel­e­vant au­thor­i­ties be­fore we leave the coun­try. But the strik­ing thing about this sit­u­a­tion is that af­ter she was trans­ferred and put on desk du­ty they lat­er put her back to work at an­oth­er bond. This is even af­ter they found a text mes­sage on her phone in which po­lice claim there was the com­mu­ni­ca­tion of a $20,000 pay­ment for al­low­ing one of the bar­rels with arms and am­mu­ni­tion to get by.

"This is why the prob­lem con­tin­ues to per­sist and all cus­toms of­fi­cers get a bad name! All non-trade and non-com­mer­cial should be ex­am­ined and checked but that is not al­ways done in some cas­es and this al­lows for things to get through.

"There are sev­er­al cus­toms and po­lice of­fi­cers un­der sur­veil­lance. A lot of this needs to be looked in­to. At Pi­ar­co and Point Lisas, there are some cus­toms of­fi­cers that need to be looked at while in Port-of-Spain the port work­ers seem to have some hand in il­lic­it ac­tiv­i­ties."

An­oth­er se­nior cus­toms of­fi­cer ex­plained how cor­rupt of­fi­cers are us­ing the sys­tem for il­le­gal ac­tiv­i­ties.

"There are sev­er­al ways that these cor­rupt cus­toms of­fi­cers help to fa­cil­i­tate this il­le­gal trade and some of them are be­ing pro­tect­ed. First­ly, there is a phys­i­cal pres­ence when they are in­formed of par­tic­u­lar car­go com­ing in. They are on-site and in some cas­es clear the car­go which has con­tra­band like guns and drugs and turn a blind eye and let it go. There is al­so the de­lay­ing of doc­u­ments and copy­ing of doc­u­ments from the orig­i­nal and chang­ing the in­for­ma­tion on them.

"It's a big mon­ey busi­ness for them. There are cas­es where they will change the Bill of Lad­ing and the ac­tu­al man­i­fest it­self. Al­though they are un­able to change what the Asy­cu­da sys­tem has it would go as the in­tend­ed item logged but the changes were made to the ac­tu­al doc­u­ment un­known to many. For ex­am­ple, if the Bill of Lad­ing says a roll of toi­let pa­per they will change it to say a nap­kin but in essence, the Asy­cu­da sys­tem logs it as a roll of toi­let pa­per."

What needs to be done?

A se­nior cus­toms of­fi­cer rec­om­mend­ed ways in which the sys­tem could be im­proved.

"There are cer­tain­ly strin­gent mea­sures that need to be put in place to en­sure that this cor­rupt ac­tiv­i­ty by my very own and oth­er law en­force­ment arms are put to a stop. I know that at the Port-of-Spain Port around 2019 there were port work­ers mark­ing bar­rels with white chalk ‘ex’, mean­ing ex­am­ined. This was in many cas­es bar­rels that con­tained con­tra­band that they would be in­formed about and when it left the port the of­fi­cials were un­der the im­pres­sion that Cus­toms had marked it ‘ex’.

"So what I un­der­stand is that we start­ed to use dif­fer­ent coloured chalk on any giv­en day and we would al­so en­sure the cus­toms of­fi­cers' ini­tial of their first name and their last name is placed on the bar­rel to en­sure that it can be le­git­i­mate­ly iden­ti­fied as ex­am­ined. "Most of the bonds where these weapons come in do not have a scan­ner, on­ly shed ten has one in Port-of-Spain and I can tell you that scan­ner is not work­ing. Added to that, one of the par­tic­u­lar bonds is pri­vate and we do not have con­trol over that bond's open­ing and clos­ing hours. Mean­ing things can come in and go even when cus­toms of­fi­cers are not there."

The bond ware­house this cus­toms of­fi­cer is re­fer­ring to is the Cen­tral bond where po­lice have made at least three ma­jor finds of guns and am­mu­ni­tion in the last eight months.

Mean­while, crim­i­nol­o­gist Figueira be­lieves that tighter con­trols at the Cus­toms and Ex­cise Di­vi­sion are re­quired if the pro­lif­er­a­tion of guns on our shores is to be re­duced.

He said the di­vi­sion and its of­fi­cers need to be put un­der the mi­cro­scope to weed out the cor­rup­tion with a strin­gent sys­tem of over­sight, fre­quent lie de­tec­tor tests to de­ter­mine the in­tegri­ty of work­ers, train­ing oth­ers in smug­gling and transna­tion­al or­gan­ised crime, and "weaponiz­ing" the Di­vi­sion by go­ing on an ag­gres­sive re­cruit­ment ex­er­cise and dou­bling the com­ple­ment of staff. He al­so called for con­fig­ur­ing the ports for sur­veil­lance by in­stalling state-of-the-art equip­ment.

Figueira said, "A mul­ti-pronged in­ter­ven­tion in­to Cus­toms and Ex­cise and all le­gal ports of T&T must be launched im­me­di­ate­ly to stem the flow of smug­gled weapons, in­duce short­ages of sup­ply and es­ca­late the cost of ac­qui­si­tion of il­lic­it weapons.

"Cus­toms and Ex­cise Di­vi­sion has to be weaponized to lead from in front: re­cruit­ment, train­ing, cre­ation of an over­sight au­thor­i­ty to en­sure the in­tegri­ty of its em­ploy­ees, a re­view of its op­er­a­tional pro­ce­dures, struc­ture, and man­age­ment, and its com­pen­sa­tion pack­age in light of it be­ing an or­gan­i­sa­tion for­ev­er in the sights of transna­tion­al or­gan­ised crime.

"This is transna­tion­al or­gan­ised crime in op­er­a­tion with the state agency charged with in­ter­dict­ing the en­try of all il­lic­it and smug­gled goods in­to T&T. Cus­toms and Ex­cise in its present op­er­a­tional  con­di­tion, be­ing not fit for pur­pose, in­ca­pable of en­gag­ing with transna­tion­al or­gan­ised crime by ef­fec­tive­ly squeez­ing the flow in­to the le­gal ports and forc­ing them to seek out oth­er means to smug­gle their weapons in­to T&T," Figueira said

"As it is now, the ports of T&T are a safe zone for transna­tion­al or­gan­ised crime. The ef­fec­tive­ness of Cus­toms and Ex­cise will be re­flect­ed in an un­bro­ken rise in the price for weapons, am­mu­ni­tion, etc where de­mand out­strips sup­ply on the mar­ket.

"The re­al­i­ty to­day is a per­verse op­po­site where," he said, and the na­tion pays the cost in blood.

Mean­while, Heer­ah rec­om­mend­ed that a Firearms In­ter­dic­tion Unit be formed with a fo­cused, ro­bust, ze­ro-tol­er­ance ap­proach to erad­i­cat­ing the il­le­gal gun trade in T&T and break­ing the back of the in­ter­na­tion­al links.

Heer­ah said the "bad ap­ples" al­low­ing these firearms to en­ter T&T's bor­ders need to be weed­ed out of the sys­tem.

"In­ad­e­quate­ly man­aged bor­ders in­clude le­gal ports where the bad ap­ples of the law en­force­ment and oth­er re­spon­si­ble au­thor­i­ties al­low guns, am­mu­ni­tion and all things il­le­gal to come in­to T&T."

He said it was crit­i­cal to "place tech­nol­o­gy that can mon­i­tor the move­ment and man­age­ment at the ports of en­tries, and al­low for ac­count­abil­i­ty from the per­sons who are as­signed to safe­guard the cit­i­zen­ry."

Heer­ah said that the au­thor­i­ties need to get to the root of the prob­lem and look at some of the so­cial fac­tors that un­der­pin gun vi­o­lence.

"Easy ac­cess to il­le­gal guns by high-risk and vul­ner­a­ble per­sons ex­ac­er­bates al­ready ex­ist­ing so­cial and eco­nom­ic in­equal­i­ties and fur­ther per­pet­u­ates gun vi­o­lence," he said

Ex­po­sure to gun vi­o­lence leads to post-trau­mat­ic stress dis­or­der, de­pres­sion, and an in­creased like­li­hood of en­gag­ing in vi­o­lence, Heer­ah said. "There is al­so a lack of es­sen­tial sup­port for vi­tal men­tal health ser­vices for those ex­posed to gun vi­o­lence," he added.

CoP: AR-15s cost $40,000-$45,000

Mean­while, the busi­ness of traf­fick­ing il­le­gal guns in­to the coun­try re­mains an ex­ten­sive and lu­cra­tive trade for the crim­i­nal un­der­world.

Ja­cob on­ly re­cent­ly re­vealed that pur­chas­ing an AK-47 or an AR-15 can cost be­tween $40,000 to $45,000 (TT) while a re­volver costs $12,000. Un­der­world sources, speak­ing on the con­di­tion of anonymi­ty, quot­ed sim­i­lar fig­ures. While weapons are al­so rent­ed to oth­ers, sources re­vealed that in many cas­es crim­i­nals are giv­en a new weapon in ex­change for tak­ing a life.

AR-15 ri­fles have fig­ured promi­nent­ly in sev­er­al dri­ve-by shoot­ings, mur­ders, and oth­er crimes by un­der­world el­e­ments and have usurped the Russ­ian-made AK-47 style ri­fles as the weapon of choice.

Au­thor­i­ties have seized sev­er­al large caches of am­mu­ni­tion for the year so far. Po­lice seized 16 high-pow­ered ri­fles, five pis­tols, sev­er­al thou­sand rounds of am­mu­ni­tion, and $2.6M worth of mar­i­jua­na at a bond in cen­tral Trinidad in Oc­to­ber.

Ear­li­er in the year on March 8, 2022, po­lice re­cov­ered and seized a cache of guns and am­mu­ni­tion in the same ware­house and in late April, the same ware­house was again bust­ed when of­fi­cers of the Spe­cial In­ves­ti­ga­tions Unit (SIU) dis­cov­ered firearms, am­mu­ni­tion, and cig­a­rettes hid­den in a wash­ing ma­chine and dry­er at the bond.

On March 17, 2022, po­lice of­fi­cers al­so made an­oth­er seizure of four as­sault ri­fles and a large quan­ti­ty of am­mu­ni­tion this time at a ware­house at the PLIPDE­CO In­dus­tri­al Es­tate, in Point Lisas.

Pipeline for the guns to come in­to T&T

Figueira point­ed out that the ma­jor pipeline for these il­le­gal firearms eas­i­ly en­ter­ing the coun­try from the Unit­ed States is through the le­gal ports of en­try in Port-of-Spain and Point Lisas as well as the Pi­ar­co air­port in some cas­es.

"There is now in T&T a re­turn to the weapons mar­ket of the USA to source sup­ply es­pe­cial­ly AR-15 as­sault ri­fle at much low­er prices than that set by the tra­di­tion­al Colom­bian gun sup­pli­ers.

"The gun smug­gling pipelines from the USA to T&T would source their sup­ply in the states of Flori­da, Geor­gia, and Texas and will be shipped to our le­gal ports from these states or oth­er US states. There is al­so the pipeline from Puer­to Ri­co, the US Vir­gin Is­lands, and the Do­mini­can Re­pub­lic."

Figueira at­trib­uted the in­crease in the sup­ply of il­le­gal firearms on T&T streets to its cheap cost, with the AR-15 as­sault ri­fle as the most pop­u­lar weapon.

"The na­ture of gun vi­o­lence in this pe­ri­od has evolved rapid­ly for two main rea­sons: the vol­ume of il­lic­it guns avail­able at af­ford­able prices on the il­lic­it mar­ket and the ever-ex­pand­ing range of types of weapons avail­able summed up in the rapid rise of the AR-15 as­sault ri­fle as the weapon of choice."

He al­so said the source for firearms en­ter­ing the coun­try has moved from Colom­bia in South Amer­i­ca to Mi­a­mi in North Amer­i­ca. How­ev­er, he added that the il­lic­it drug traf­fick­ing pipeline from Flori­da that ex­ist­ed since the Ju­ly 27, 1990 coup had not been plugged by the au­thor­i­ties and is back in op­er­a­tion. He said the sys­tem had been left to col­lapse by the politi­cians and Cus­toms.

Flori­da, he said, is a haven due to its lax gun laws, close prox­im­i­ty, and huge T&T pop­u­la­tion liv­ing there, many of whom are will­ing to get in­to the il­le­gal trade.

Le­gal Vs il­le­gal firearms

SAS­MAN Sales LLC, a US-based com­pa­ny that as­sists lo­cal firearms deal­ers with ob­tain­ing weapons from the US al­so al­lud­ed to po­ten­tial cor­rup­tion at Cus­toms and Ex­cise in a blog they pub­lished on­line en­ti­tled, "Firearm com­po­nent parts–What Trinidad Cus­toms, Law En­force­ment & Ju­di­cia­ry Need to Know."

The com­pa­ny in­di­cat­ed that even get­ting le­git­i­mate firearms in­to the coun­try pos­es po­ten­tial cor­rup­tion, "Ar­ti­fi­cial short­age is the prac­tice of mak­ing a process near im­pos­si­ble then so­lic­it­ing bribes to grease the wheels to get the process to func­tion for a fee.

"When there is ef­fi­cien­cy, trans­paren­cy, and cer­tain­ty of process, the ar­ti­fi­cial short­age can­not be used as a tool of cor­rup­tion."

Ac­cord­ing to the blog, a lot of ef­fort is be­ing ex­pend­ed on ques­tion­ing about firearms is­sued to law-abid­ing cit­i­zens and re­strict­ing law-abid­ing cit­i­zens' own­er­ship of firearms. Un­rea­son­able neg­a­tive pres­sure is al­so be­ing ap­plied to the le­gal im­por­ta­tion of parts and ac­ces­sories, they felt.

"The firearms used for mur­ders, gang­land shoot­ing sprees, vi­o­lent rob­beries, and as­sas­si­na­tions are all il­le­gal weapons yet we’re not see­ing the same em­pha­sis on il­le­gal firearms as we're see­ing with those who went through the rig­or­ous FUL process. Mean­while, il­le­gal AR15-styled ma­chine guns and hand­guns mod­i­fied for ful­ly au­to­mat­ic op­er­a­tion are flood­ing the street and are just as easy to ob­tain as 'a box of dead' (KFC or Roy­al Cas­tle chick­en)."

On March 20, 2016, gun deal­ers in T&T called on then min­is­ter of na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty Ed­mund Dil­lon to in­ves­ti­gate what they de­scribed as a se­ri­ous na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty breach when firearms that are im­port­ed in­to the coun­try are left overnight in the Cus­toms and Ex­cise Di­vi­sion bonds al­leged­ly un­at­tend­ed and un­se­cured.

There were al­so con­cerns about the Di­vi­sion's then-new Asy­cu­da sys­tem, which on­ly al­lows doc­u­ments to be filed when the ves­sel car­ry­ing arms and am­mu­ni­tion ar­rives in the coun­try.

Cus­toms and Ex­cise func­tions

Ac­cord­ing to the Cus­toms and Ex­cise and Di­vi­sion web­site, it is a part of the Min­istry of Fi­nance and its du­ty is to pro­tect the na­tion’s bor­ders, so­ci­ety, and en­vi­ron­ment, com­bat smug­gling and en­force health, stan­dards, and en­vi­ron­men­tal pol­i­cy and laws.

The di­vi­sion is ex­pect­ed to im­ple­ment na­tion­al, re­gion­al, and in­ter­na­tion­al poli­cies, the aim of which is to raise rev­enue and com­bat any as­so­ci­at­ed fraud. The di­vi­sion is al­so re­spon­si­ble for the cor­rect ap­pli­ca­tion of trade pol­i­cy. It ap­plies and mon­i­tors com­pli­ance with trade-re­lat­ed rules and agree­ments to fa­cil­i­tate le­git­i­mate trade.

The Cus­toms and Ex­cise Di­vi­sion is al­so re­quired to re­quired by law to pro­vide this in­for­ma­tion to the CSO (Cen­tral Sta­tis­ti­cal Of­fice) for com­pi­la­tion, analy­sis, and pub­li­ca­tion of trade da­ta.

What did the Ag comp­trol­ler say?

Ear­li­er this year Act­ing Comp­trol­ler at Cus­toms and Ex­cise Di­vi­sion Vidya Mar­cial ad­mit­ted to the Sun­day Guardian in an ex­clu­sive in­ter­view that there were sev­er­al short­com­ings at the di­vi­sion which in­clud­ed prob­lems with non-func­tion­al scan­ners, un­der­staffing, and oth­er is­sues of con­cern. She did not an­swer calls to her phone last week.

In fact, Figueira said that in 2010 when the Peo­ple's Part­ner­ship gov­ern­ment en­tered of­fice, "Cus­toms was al­ready dead; the staff lev­el was low, va­can­cies were not be­ing filled, and there was no op­por­tu­ni­ty for pro­mo­tion." The sit­u­a­tion has wors­ened, he added.

BOX

CA­PA sta­tis­tics

Ac­cord­ing to the CA­PA (Crime and Prob­lem Analy­sis), the num­ber of firearms found and seized from 2017 to 2021 is 4,376.

2021- 681

2020-755

2019-888

2018-988

2017-1,064

BOX at cen­tre of sto­ry

Hinds: Govt wants manda­to­ry poly­graph tests for Cus­toms and oth­ers

Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Fitzger­ald Hinds says that the Gov­ern­ment wants to in­tro­duce leg­is­la­tion that would en­sure manda­to­ry poly­graph tests and "in­tegri­ty test­ing" not on­ly for em­ploy­ees of the Cus­toms and Ex­cise­Di­vi­sion but oth­er branch­es of the pub­lic ser­vice and law en­force­ment.

When he was a min­is­ter in the Min­istry of the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al, he said he "took the re­spon­si­bil­i­ty on the ba­sis of the Gov­ern­ment’s pol­i­cy which was pre­pared and ac­cept­ed by the Cab­i­net" to draft a bill for poly­graph­ing and the use of oth­er mod­ern tech­niques for in­tegri­ty test­ing. That bill was ap­proved by the Cab­i­net in the Par­lia­ment in the last ses­sion, he said. "We did not get the im­pres­sion that we would have got­ten the sup­port of the oth­er side. We con­sid­er that bill would per­mit manda­to­ry and more reg­u­lar test­ing for the in­tegri­ty of not on­ly Cus­toms and Im­mi­gra­tion but the Po­lice Ser­vice, De­fence Force, and el­e­ments of the In­land Rev­enue. They have the po­ten­tial if they lack the in­tegri­ty to cre­ate se­ri­ous may­hem for the State, es­pe­cial­ly in our de­ter­mined ef­fort to pro­tect the peo­ple of T&T.”

Hinds said that they in­tend to rein­tro­duce this piece of leg­is­la­tion for Par­lia­ment’s con­sid­er­a­tion de­pend­ing on the leg­isla­tive agen­da.

On whether the Cus­toms and Ex­cise Di­vi­sion should be un­der the Min­istry of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty, Hinds said that has been sug­gest­ed in the past, but the func­tions of that di­vi­sion are tech­ni­cal and are of a fi­nan­cial na­ture which is why it is un­der the Min­istry of Fi­nance.

"These are very spe­cial­ist types of op­er­a­tions. We ac­cept that it has im­pli­ca­tions for na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty as part of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty’s bor­der man­age­ment and con­trol op­er­a­tions and sys­tems. We have plat­forms in na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty that in­volve Cus­toms and Ex­cise so that col­lab­o­ra­tion is quite pos­si­ble. The big­ger ques­tion of if it should fall un­der the Min­istry of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty or stay where it is is not some­thing I have giv­en any se­ri­ous thought to. But we do have mech­a­nisms for col­lab­o­ra­tion on a reg­u­lar ba­sis."

Asked if there should be a full-scale in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­to the al­le­ga­tions that some Cus­toms and Ex­cise Di­vi­sion em­ploy­ees are as­sist­ing in bring­ing in il­le­gal firearms he said the pas­sage of in­tegri­ty leg­is­la­tion will solve those prob­lems.

"While I can­not say that with a de­gree of cer­tain­ty, what I do know is that we have hu­man be­ings in all or­gan­i­sa­tions with­in the fo­cus of the bill and hu­man be­ings are ca­pa­ble of many things and the records will show that em­ploy­ees of all those or­gan­i­sa­tions over the years have been found to be com­plic­it in ac­tiv­i­ties that are threat­en­ing to na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty, and we have tak­en the view that we should get Par­lia­ment’s ap­proval to test the in­tegri­ty of all these agen­cies."

Con­cern­ing the need for more mod­ern equip­ment at the port like scan­ners, he said the Gov­ern­ment will con­tin­ue to en­sure not on­ly Cus­toms but all state bod­ies are ful­ly equipped.