RHON­DOR DOWLAT-ROS­TANT

The Down­town Own­ers and Mer­chants As­so­ci­a­tion (DO­MA) has praised po­lice for the seizure of 17 high-pow­ered weapons and dozens of rounds of am­mu­ni­tion on Tues­day, but has added this will not be ef­fec­tive pro­tec­tion of cit­i­zens un­til and un­less the ex­porters and lo­cal con­signees of these weapons are ar­rest­ed and brought to jus­tice.

In a state­ment is­sued yes­ter­day af­ter­noon, DO­MA de­scribed the dis­cov­ery as a “star­tling in­ci­dent that should not pass with­out great scruti­ny and de­ter­mined in­ves­ti­ga­tion.”

“At a time when so much is be­ing said about the func­tion of the pub­lic ser­vices and the need for their im­proved per­for­mance, the se­ri­ous­ness of that need is high­light­ed by the dead­ly con­se­quences that can flow from the pas­sage of such ship­ments of as­sault weapons and am­mu­ni­tion in­to our coun­try,” DO­MA said.

“With the busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty con­stant­ly the sub­ject of un­sub­stan­ti­at­ed in­nu­en­do and the fod­der for talk show hosts and so­cial me­dia rab­ble-rousers, we want to say with in­dig­nant re­gret that this was the per­fect op­por­tu­ni­ty to set a trap and to pounce on whichev­er per­son or per­sons came to claim this bar­rel of dead­ly con­tent. This was once again a clas­sic text­book mo­ment to iden­ti­fy who is let­ting the guns pass in­to our coun­try,” it added.

DO­MA said the fact that this was the sec­ond oc­ca­sion in which this type of lethal car­go has come to the same bond­ed ware­house must be an in­di­ca­tion of some­thing that is tak­ing place specif­i­cal­ly at that lo­ca­tion.

“One must in­stinc­tive­ly ask the ques­tion; is yes­ter­day’s dis­cov­ery the on­ly ship­ment of arms pass­ing through that same ware­house since an iden­ti­cal ship­ment last year? It is left to be seen whether the of­ten made promis­es about se­cur­ing our bor­ders will lead to any in­ter­dic­tion and ar­rest re­gard­ing this bar­rel of guns. It is, in our view, im­por­tant to in­di­cate that a bond­ed ware­house is, ac­cord­ing to the laws of Trinidad & To­ba­go, a port of en­try and the in­ci­dent yes­ter­day is ac­tu­al­ly a breach of one of our bor­ders.”

DO­MA added: “At a time when the re­ports of dead bod­ies be­ing found all across our coun­try are more ram­pant than ever and im­ages of moth­ers cry­ing for their mur­dered sons is be­com­ing a per­ma­nent fea­ture of our news, it seems to us that this dis­cov­ery of so many dan­ger­ous weapons should be an ur­gent pri­or­i­ty for mul­ti­ple state agen­cies who should be­gin by ques­tion­ing them­selves as to how this could be hap­pen­ing in our coun­try. The fact that so many vic­tims are re­port­ing that when they are at­tacked, all of the per­pe­tra­tors have guns, is fur­ther cause for the sit­u­a­tion at this ware­house to be solved.”

It said ship­ments of car­go from over­seas re­quire rig­or­ous de­c­la­ra­tions; doc­u­men­ta­tion, ver­i­fi­able iden­ti­fi­ca­tion; de­scrip­tion of con­tents and a bill of lad­ing that in­cludes weights and di­men­sions.

“Sure­ly the ex­ces­sive weight of this bar­rel must have been a clue that some­thing was wrong?” DO­MA said.

In the af­ter­math of the seizure, act­ing Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice (CoP) Mc Don­ald Ja­cob said he “in­tends to in­ten­si­fy the pres­sure on the crim­i­nal el­e­ments op­er­at­ing with­in so­ci­ety by chan­nelling re­sources and work­ing strate­gi­cal­ly with oth­er agen­cies to re­move il­le­gal firearms from our com­mu­ni­ties.”

Po­lice said yes­ter­day that they have no leads yet in­to the gun haul at the Cou­va-based bond­ed cus­toms ware­house on Tues­day and are work­ing with in­ter­na­tion­al in­tel­li­gence agen­cies in the hope of mak­ing a break­through soon.

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