A for­mer po­lice com­mis­sion­er has sug­gest­ed that an over­haul of the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice (TTPS) as well as this coun­try’s jus­tice sys­tem is now need­ed in re­sponse to wor­ry­ing gun crimes.

“Both the po­lice and jus­tice sys­tem re­quire a com­plete over­haul and change. Do­ing the same things over and over or sim­ply tweak­ing sys­tems and pro­grammes will not achieve any ac­tu­al al­tru­is­tic im­prove­ments in T&T,” cau­tioned Cana­di­an Dwayne Gibbs, who served as this coun­try’s top cop from Ju­ly 2010 to Sep­tem­ber 2012.

Gibbs, who re­cent­ly spoke out in a Guardian Me­dia in­ter­view against a plan by the Kei­th Row­ley ad­min­is­tra­tion to set up a new vet­ted unit with­in the TTPS which he be­lieves will fos­ter cor­rup­tion, is now ad­vo­cat­ing for greater use of avail­able in­tel­li­gence sys­tems to com­bat gun traf­fick­ing and to bet­ter se­cure the coun­try’s bor­ders.

He point­ed out that most of the il­le­gal weapons en­ter­ing T&T were com­ing from coun­tries such as Venezuela and the Unit­ed States on go-fast boats.

“Drug traf­fick­ers and crime gangs ben­e­fit great­ly fi­nan­cial­ly through the black mar­ket sell­ing of weapons and the use of weapons … to sup­port their crime ac­tiv­i­ties,” Gibbs added.

Sta­tis­tics from the Crime and Prob­lem Analy­sis Branch (CA­PA) of the TTPS, span­ning the pe­ri­od 2015-2022, show that the range of crimes in­volv­ing firearms was wide and var­ied.

In 2020, there was a to­tal of 2,901 firearm-re­lat­ed of­fences of which the ma­jor­i­ty (1,747) were rob­beries. How­ev­er, the neg­a­tive trend has con­tin­ued since then with more firearm-re­lat­ed rob­beries than mur­ders and wound­ings.

With that said, the num­ber of firearms seized at le­gal ports of en­try over the last eight years does not com­pare with the 12,000 guns the Strate­gic Ser­vices Agency (SSA) be­lieves are on the streets. On­ly nine firearms were seized be­tween 2015 and 2020.

In 2021, there were 38 seizures, 30 of which were found at the Swis­s­port Car­go Bond of the Pi­ar­co In­ter­na­tion­al Air­port. Of the 38 seizures, 21 firearms were pis­tols while 15 were ri­fles.

In 2022, 52 firearms were seized. Of that num­ber, 42 were ri­fles and ten were pis­tols.

Based on the da­ta from CA­PA, ri­fles and pis­tols are among the most seized weapons in T&T since 2010. Over the last 12 years, 2,078 re­volvers were seized by the TTPS in­clud­ing 57 so far this year.

With the sit­u­a­tion as it stands, Gibbs said, “T&T could do more to se­cure their bor­ders and use avail­able an­a­lyt­i­cal sys­tems/in­for­ma­tion and tech­niques to go af­ter and to stop drug traf­fick­ers, gang lead­ers and those ben­e­fit­ing from the pro­ceeds of crime. Col­lab­o­ra­tion with oth­er coun­tries, to en­hance drug in­ter­dic­tion and to stop in­ter­na­tion­al drug ship­ments, hu­man traf­fick­ing and ter­ror­ism is part of the an­swer.”

Al­so com­ment­ing on the lev­el of gun traf­fick­ing, se­cu­ri­ty ex­pert Luke Hadeed said the sit­u­a­tion calls for ef­fec­tive man­age­ment and con­sis­ten­cy from the se­cu­ri­ty ap­pa­ra­tus. “Crime is a busi­ness,” he told Guardian Me­dia, “It is an op­er­a­tion. It is an or­gan­i­sa­tion that is no dif­fer­ent than any oth­er.”

While stat­ing that there was ev­i­dence to sug­gest the au­thor­i­ties were be­ing strate­gic and tact­ful, he cau­tioned that “we need to be con­sis­tent, and that con­sis­ten­cy is re­quired for all of the so­lu­tions, meth­ods and tech­niques that have been de­vel­oped to­wards re­duc­ing the ills through ef­fec­tive en­force­ment in de­tec­tion and pros­e­cu­tion.”