Cus­toms and Ex­cise of­fi­cers have seized nar­cotics val­ued at more than $7 mil­lion at a tran­sit shed in cen­tral Trinidad.

Ac­cord­ing to the Cus­toms and Ex­cise Di­vi­sion, the seizure was made on last Fri­day dur­ing rou­tine ex­am­i­na­tions by of­fi­cers at­tached to the Pre­ven­tive Branch.

The of­fi­cers were alert­ed to a ship­ment orig­i­nat­ing from Mi­a­mi, Flori­da. On fur­ther in­spec­tion, they dis­cov­ered 55 pack­ages of a plant-like sub­stance re­sem­bling mar­i­jua­na con­cealed with­in ban­quet chair seats.

The sub­stance weighed 30.32 kilo­grammes and has an es­ti­mat­ed street val­ue of TT$7,570,904.

The Di­vi­sion stat­ed that it re­mains com­mit­ted to se­cur­ing the bor­ders of Trinidad and To­ba­go against nar­cotics and oth­er forms of smug­gling.

Mean­while, of­fi­cers of the Na­tion­al Spe­cial Op­er­a­tions Unit (NSOU), sup­port­ed by the Trinidad and To­ba­go Po­lice Ser­vice (TTPS) K-9 Unit and the Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Spe­cial Op­er­a­tions Group, ex­e­cut­ed an an­ti-crime ex­er­cise in the San­gre Grande Po­lice Sta­tion dis­trict, East­ern Di­vi­sion, re­sult­ing in the seizure of nar­cotics and a firearm val­ued at more than $440,000.

The ex­er­cise took place be­tween 10.30 am and 3 pm on Tues­day. It was led by ACP Crim­i­nal Di­vi­sion, Michael Pierre, and su­per­vised by ASP Ag St Clair.

Ini­tial search­es of two res­i­dences at Dar­manie Hill, Guaico, did not re­sult in the dis­cov­ery of il­le­gal items. How­ev­er, based on in­tel­li­gence pro­vid­ed by mem­bers of the com­mu­ni­ty, of­fi­cers pro­ceed­ed to a forest­ed area lo­cat­ed ap­prox­i­mate­ly 150 feet north of the res­i­dences.

In that lo­ca­tion, of­fi­cers found two white plas­tic buck­ets con­cealed in the bush­es. A de­tailed ex­am­i­na­tion re­vealed the ten brown rec­tan­gu­lar pack­ets and five trans­par­ent plas­tic bags con­tain­ing cannabis, weigh­ing 10 kilo­grams, with an es­ti­mat­ed street val­ue of TT$420,000, four trans­par­ent Zi­plock bags con­tain­ing co­caine, weigh­ing 120 grams, with an es­ti­mat­ed street val­ue of TT$24,000, and one black Tau­rus G2C 9mm pis­tol fit­ted with a mag­a­zine.

The items were seized and are to be processed as ev­i­dence.

Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice, Al­lis­ter Gue­var­ro, ac­knowl­edged the ef­forts of the units in­volved. He stat­ed, “I wish to com­mend the of­fi­cers for the out­stand­ing work be­ing car­ried out. I am par­tic­u­lar­ly pleased with the lev­el of ef­fort and ded­i­ca­tion be­ing demon­strat­ed in the tac­ti­cal, traf­fic, and search op­er­a­tions, all of which com­ple­ment our on­go­ing polic­ing ini­tia­tives. Con­grat­u­la­tions on these suc­cess­es, and I en­cour­age you to main­tain this high stan­dard of per­for­mance.”

In­ves­ti­ga­tions in­to the dis­cov­ery are con­tin­u­ing un­der the di­rec­tion of the Trinidad and To­ba­go Po­lice Ser­vice.