SHAL­IZA HAS­SANALI and JOSHUA SEEMU­N­GAL

The pro­lif­er­a­tion of guns and or­gan­ised crim­i­nal gangs is threat­en­ing the sta­bil­i­ty of many coun­tries in the Caribbean and Latin Amer­i­ca. It is al­so af­fect­ing cit­i­zens’ democ­ra­cy and im­ped­ing so­cio-eco­nom­ic de­vel­op­ment. These chal­lenges were em­pha­sised when re­gion­al lead­ers came to­geth­er as a unit­ed front at a two-day crime sym­po­sium (which start­ed on Mon­day) at the Hy­att Re­gency Ho­tel, Port-of-Spain.

The up­surge in il­le­gal guns flow­ing in­to the Caribbean and the sub­se­quent ex­plo­sion in crime and vi­o­lence led to Cari­com Heads of Gov­ern­ment com­pris­ing Prime Min­is­ters Dr Kei­th Row­ley (Trinidad and To­ba­go), Mia Mot­t­ley (Bar­ba­dos), An­drew Hol­ness (Ja­maica), Philip Davis (The Ba­hamas), Phillip J Pierre (St Lu­cia), Roo­sevelt Sker­rit (Do­mini­ca) and Dr Ralph Gon­za­les (St Vin­cent) de­clar­ing war on these weapons, start­ing with a de­ci­sion to ban au­to­mat­ic ri­fles in the re­gion.

On Tues­day they al­so agreed to send a com­mu­niqué to the Unit­ed States Gov­ern­ment reg­is­ter­ing grave con­cern at the fre­quen­cy in which il­le­gal US-man­u­fac­tured guns have been en­ter­ing the Caribbean. These weapons, they said, have been fu­elling mur­ders, crimes and gun vi­o­lence at an alarm­ing rate. It has been cost­ing coun­tries in Latin Amer­i­ca and the Caribbean bil­lions col­lec­tive­ly to fight this scourge.

T&T ex­pe­ri­enced its dead­liest year in 2022 with a mur­der rate of 601. For this year so far, 178 mur­ders have al­ready been com­mit­ted and the ma­jor­i­ty were gun-re­lat­ed.

T&T was ranked sixth among coun­tries with the high­est crime rates by the World of Sta­tis­tics in its 2023 re­port.

Cari­com chair­man and Prime Min­is­ter of the Ba­hamas, Philip Davis, in Port-of-Spain last week, said that the crime prob­lem re­quires all hands on deck and a col­lab­o­ra­tive ap­proach.

“An epi­dem­ic of vi­o­lence grips our re­gion, one that claims lives and gen­er­ates fear and anger,” Davis said.

He said every gun used to com­mit a crime in the Caribbean is smug­gled in­to our coun­tries.

Last Ju­ly, T&T’s Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Fitzger­ald Hinds told a Joint Se­lect Com­mit­tee meet­ing that an analy­sis from the Strate­gic Ser­vices Agency had de­ter­mined there were ap­prox­i­mate­ly 12,000 il­le­gal firearms in T&T.

Crim­i­nol­o­gist Dau­rius Figueira con­tends that this is in­ac­cu­rate. Figueira be­lieves there are more il­le­gal weapons in cir­cu­la­tion.

He said giv­en the spate of fa­tal shoot­ings and gun vi­o­lence, “I be­lieve it is three times that fig­ure.”

Ques­tion­ing if the 2023 mur­der rate will sur­pass 2022, he added, “At the rate that we are go­ing it seems 2023 will be an­oth­er record-break­ing year with mur­ders.”

Giv­ing in­sight as to how guns have been il­le­gal­ly en­ter­ing our shores, he said the first man­i­fes­ta­tion was the bulk that came from Colom­bia in the ear­ly 1990s.

Small quan­ti­ties were al­so sneaked in­to the coun­try from Amer­i­ca.

But what hap­pened go­ing in­to the 21st Cen­tu­ry, he said, was that the Colom­bians’ gun prices es­ca­lat­ed and bro­kers in Trinidad went in search of cheap­er sup­pli­ers.

Their search led them back to Amer­i­ca which had ex­pand­ed its il­le­gal gun op­er­a­tions in the states of Texas, Geor­gia and Flori­da.

Bal­ti­more–north­east of Wash­ing­ton DC–was al­so boom­ing with il­le­gal guns.

In Flori­da, laws have been so lax it is easy for smug­glers to get hand­guns, as­sault ri­fles, re­volvers, pis­tols, se­mi-au­to­mat­ic and high-pow­ered weapons in­clud­ing am­mu­ni­tion at prices they are will­ing to pay.

“So, where do you think the weapon­ry from the 1990 Ju­ly at­tempt­ed coup came from?” Figueira asked. It is Flori­da, he said. “These are the epi­cen­tre of the smug­gling cor­ri­dor.”

While the US is the main sup­pli­er of il­le­gal guns, Figueira said the weapons are al­so smug­gled in­to T&T from Brazil, Venezuela and some coun­tries un­der the Eu­ro­pean Union.

FILE: The barrel of guns found at the Medway Customs Warehouse at Old Southern Main Road, off St Mary’s Junction, in March 2022.

AR-15 most sought af­ter

The most high­ly sought-af­ter Amer­i­can gun is the AR-15 while the Glock, Ruger and Tau­rus are al­so top choic­es by crim­i­nals.

Crim­i­nals use these il­le­gal guns to kill ri­vals in fights for drug turf–brazen pub­lic killings, in­clud­ing dri­ve-by shoot­ings.

Cit­i­zens have al­so come un­der the gun in home in­va­sions and rob­beries, and in­no­cent by­standers have al­so be­come col­lat­er­al dam­age in re­venge killings.

“These weapons are il­le­gal­ly brought in­to the coun­try by pro­fes­sion­al smug­glers work­ing for transna­tion­al or­gan­ised crime groups of which gang lead­ers and its mem­bers are af­fil­i­ates,” Figueira said.

Those be­hind the smug­gling trade use so­phis­ti­cat­ed meth­ods to get the guns here.

While the sim­ple method of bring­ing in guns is through per­son­al car­go, they have been dis­man­tling the guns and hid­ing them in en­gine blocks, au­to­mo­biles, ap­pli­ances, cof­fee cans, and even car­tons.

“The same way you smug­gle drugs you use the same method to bring in weapons.”

Figueira said drugs would be sneaked in­to T&T, Ja­maica, St Lu­cia, and St Vin­cent at the same time to min­imise the risks “of in­ter­dic­tion and the clos­ing down of your pipeline.”

Al­so, there is lit­tle re­sis­tance by the State.

“So it’s easy to ac­cess be­cause their bor­ders are open. You go to the trans­ship­ment points that give you the least re­sis­tance.

“So, what is hap­pen­ing to us is the pipeline from the Unit­ed States kicked on with a ve­loc­i­ty, and, as usu­al, the smug­glers found and know that our Cus­toms and Ex­cise Di­vi­sion has been gut­ted.”

The politi­cians have failed on the job, Figueira de­clared.

 He blamed past and present ad­min­is­tra­tions for al­low­ing Cus­toms di­vi­sion to with­er due to short­ages of trained staff and ob­so­lete or non-func­tion­al equip­ment to in­ter­dict arms com­ing in.

Last No­vem­ber, the Cus­toms and Ex­cise Di­vi­sion was grilled over the in­flux of il­le­gal firearms en­ter­ing law­ful ports of en­try dur­ing a Joint Se­lect Com­mit­tee (JSC) meet­ing chaired by PNM MP Kei­th Scot­land.

The JSC heard of the di­vi­sion’s on­go­ing con­straints that had led to just 3,998 ship­ping con­tain­ers be­ing in­spect­ed out of 23,000 im­port­ed in­to T&T be­tween Jan­u­ary and Au­gust of 2022.

The guns, Figueira said, are not on­ly pur­chased by crim­i­nals. “De­cent and re­spectable peo­ple in Trinidad and To­ba­go buy­ing il­lic­it weapons at gang­land. And they not buy­ing one…they buy­ing them in mul­ti­ples. So, this whole fo­cus on gang talk, and gun talk is a mi­rage. While you want to blame the gang­land for every­thing no­body is deal­ing with the oth­er re­al­i­ty.”

Daurius Figueira

‘Drugs fu­elling de­mand for guns’

Hav­ing tuned in to the crime sym­po­sium, Figueira said no Cari­com leader called for a fight against the boom­ing drug trade which has been the main trig­ger be­hind the killings and gun vi­o­lence in the Caribbean. “Wher­ev­er they have drugs there will be guns as they need to safe­guard their drugs (main­ly co­caine and mar­i­jua­na).”

The crim­i­nol­o­gist said the is­sue of the guns from the Unit­ed States was just po­lit­i­cal de­flec­tion. “The fact of the mat­ter is the en­tire sym­po­sium did not ad­dress the core rea­son for the vi­o­lence in the re­gion which is the con­tin­u­ing … height­en­ing of the il­lic­it drug trade through the Caribbean, Eu­rope and the US. We are talk­ing about transna­tion­al or­gan­ised crime who have af­fil­i­ates with­in the is­land state and to­geth­er they are work­ing a busi­ness mod­el to move prod­ucts from its pro­duc­ing re­gions in Latin Amer­i­ca to its con­sum­ing na­tions.”

Figueira said the vol­ume of drugs en­ter­ing the Caribbean has sig­nif­i­cant­ly in­creased caus­ing may­hem, blood­shed, fear and so­cial de­cay.

“The ton­nage mov­ing in­to the Caribbean has ex­plod­ed.”

Sim­i­lar­ly, large quan­ti­ties of drugs are find­ing their way in­to Africa and Eu­rope.

“Wher­ev­er the busi­ness mod­el goes the cas­cad­ing col­lapse of the so­cial or­der fol­lows. But you stand up for two days and re­fused to talk about that dri­ving busi­ness mod­el … the drug trade that is caus­ing every­thing. There is a fun­da­men­tal law that wher­ev­er there is a de­mand sup­ply will ar­rive.”

The drug trade, he said, has al­so been dri­ving hu­man smug­gling and mon­ey laun­der­ing.

“So, it’s a whole nexus of il­lic­it trade with the drug trade that has wrecked the Caribbean so­ci­ety.”

Figueira said many of the Caribbean mur­ders have been linked to the con­trol of drug blocks and gang ri­val­ry.

Drugs from Colom­bia, Bo­livia and Pe­ru find their way more fre­quent­ly in­to T&T, St Lu­cia, St Vin­cent and Ja­maica than oth­er re­gion­al coun­tries.

Figueira said the sym­po­sium sim­ply ad­dressed a 1980s nar­ra­tive in 2023.

“All transna­tion­al or­gan­ised crime ... It is dope that their cit­i­zens are get­ting killed for. They con­sid­er that the is­sue of the drugs is so in­tractable they can­not han­dle it. How do you ex­pect the Unit­ed States to con­trol its bor­ders to pre­vent guns from be­ing ex­port­ed to the Caribbean when we have no con­trol over our bor­ders?”

Figueira said the Gov­ern­ment has done noth­ing to se­cure our bor­ders, “but ex­pect Amer­i­ca to se­cure theirs for your ben­e­fit.”

To end the il­le­gal im­por­ta­tion of guns, he said Cari­com’s Heads of Gov­ern­ment must tack­le the drug flow.

Cari­com’s crime plan

Go­ing for­ward, Cari­com has promised to un­der­take a com­pre­hen­sive over­haul of the crim­i­nal jus­tice sys­tem, strength­en re­gion­al foren­sic ca­pa­bil­i­ties to im­prove the qual­i­ty of ev­i­dence and speed to con­duct tri­als, im­ple­ment a Cari­com ar­rest war­rant treaty, aug­ment the ju­ris­dic­tion of mag­is­trates, re­form our ed­u­ca­tion sys­tem and strength­en the ca­pac­i­ty of the Re­gion­al In­tel­li­gence Fu­sion Cen­tre.

Cari­com CoPs share chal­lenges, suc­cess­es

The Ba­hamas CoP

Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er of the Roy­al Ba­hamas Po­lice Force Clay­ton Fer­nan­der has iden­ti­fied firearms and drug traf­fick­ing as their biggest headache in fight­ing crime.

Speak­ing to the Sun­day Guardian at the crime sym­po­sium, Fer­nan­der ad­mit­ted that large ship­ments of freight con­tain­ers at their ports have placed a strain on their re­sources and abil­i­ty to de­tect firearms and drugs.

Both il­le­gal drugs and firearms have been in­creas­ing the mur­der rate in the Ba­hamas which has a pop­u­la­tion of 400,000.

In 2021, there were 119 mur­ders while last year 128 peo­ple were killed.

Many of the mur­ders were com­mit­ted with high-pow­ered weapons of which 370 were tak­en off the streets in 2022.

The Ba­hamas is close to Flori­da, mak­ing the coun­try vul­ner­a­ble to firearms traf­fick­ing, Fer­nan­der said.

The guns are dis­man­tled and clev­er­ly con­cealed in box­es of food items and large house­hold ap­pli­ances that come through cus­toms.

Nine guns were re­cent­ly found in a Kool-Aid box at the Bi­mi­ni Air­port which is a mere 50 miles off the coast of Flori­da. Hid­den in the ex­haust of a for­eign boat that docked in­to the coun­try, Fer­nan­der said law en­force­ment of­fi­cers man­aged to find sev­er­al kilo­grams of co­caine which had GPS em­bed­ded in the pack­ages.

“So, if the drugs were stolen it could have been eas­i­ly tracked.”

Fer­nan­der spoke about a de­vel­op­ing trend where “ghost firearms” and “3D guns” have been cir­cu­lat­ing in the coun­try.

They have al­so picked up on a few straw buy­ers. Straw pur­chas­ing is when some­one buys a gun for an­oth­er per­son who is not legal­ly al­lowed to own one.

A ghost firearm has no se­r­i­al num­ber en­graved on the weapon while 3D guns are as­sem­bled in plas­tic parts that can be made with a 3D print­er.

3D print­ing us­es com­put­er-cre­at­ed dig­i­tal mod­els to cre­ate re­al-world ob­jects. The print­er fol­lows the shape of the mod­el by stack­ing lay­er up­on lay­er of plas­tic on oth­er ma­te­ri­als to make the weapon.

“With­in the last five years, we have seen an in­crease in mur­ders as a re­sult of the il­le­gal guns en­ter­ing the coun­try.”

At least 98 per cent of the coun­try’s mur­ders was a re­sult of il­le­gal guns.

“The Ba­hamas is sur­round­ed by wa­ter so there are a lot of il­le­gal ports of en­try” which are not prop­er­ly pa­trolled, he said.

Their po­lice ser­vice has 3,000 of­fi­cers.

To com­bat the gun trade, Fer­nan­der said last month a gun task force was es­tab­lished.

Fer­nan­der said if some­one was caught with an il­le­gal firearm the mat­ter is not de­layed in court as they fast-track bal­lis­tics test­ing and gun re­port to ex­pe­dite the case.

“You are look­ing at a two weeks turn­around. Ei­ther you’re lucky to get off or you go to jail.”

Ja­maica CoP

Ja­maica’s Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Antony An­der­son is see­ing a new trend–il­le­gal guns are no longer be­ing con­trolled by gang lead­ers and crim­i­nal or­gan­i­sa­tions but in­stead there is a “de­moc­ra­ti­sa­tion of own­er­ship” by young gang mem­bers from de­pressed com­mu­ni­ties.

“This has flowed from the il­le­gal and il­lic­it mon­ey that is de­rived from lot­tery scam­ming in Ja­maica. That has pro­vid­ed sig­nif­i­cant mon­ey for young peo­ple in any way they chose. We find that young per­sons who are in­volved in this trade are ac­tu­al­ly us­ing their mon­ey to pur­chase firearms and those firearms are play­ing out in their ri­val­ries in the streets.”

Oth­ers buy their guns through mon­ey laun­der­ing.

These guns, An­der­son said, are hav­ing a neg­a­tive im­pact on so­ci­ety.

To source the guns, one would need a phone, con­nec­tiv­i­ty and a list.

“There is a high bar­ri­er to en­try. You have to know the peo­ple to cre­ate the net­work and you must have enough mon­ey to buy the prod­uct and then sell it,” he told the Sun­day Guardian dur­ing an in­ter­view.

He said as long as there was a mar­ket some­one will fu­el the trade.

“Some of the largest sup­pli­ers here in the re­gion would be the Unit­ed States. To ac­quire them in the USA is not dif­fi­cult. The chal­lenge is how do you get them in­to the coun­try, so you use var­i­ous means.”

The guns are con­cealed and shipped in bar­rels or stuffed in large ap­pli­ances and sent to a port in Ja­maica.

Haiti and Hon­duras have al­so been sup­ply­ing guns to Ja­maican smug­glers in ex­change for high-grade mar­i­jua­na and drugs.

Last year 1,498 peo­ple were killed in Ja­maica with 85 per cent of the mur­ders be­ing com­mit­ted by il­le­gal guns.

Of the 1,498 vic­tims, 67 per cent were killed by gangs.

Like the Ba­hamas, An­der­son said Ja­maica was a trans­ship­ment point for drugs.

Re­cent­ly, Ja­maica im­posed stiffer penal­ties for drug pos­ses­sion and gun of­fences.

At the end of the sym­po­sium, the Sun­day Guardian asked T&T’s Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er, Er­la Hare­wood-Christo­pher, if the TTPS will adopt any of the rec­om­men­da­tions put for­ward by the Cari­com lead­ers to fight crime and crim­i­nal­i­ty, and she said that she had no doubt these rec­om­men­da­tions will be dis­cussed at next month’s As­so­ci­a­tion of Caribbean Com­mis­sion­ers of Po­lice meet­ing host­ed in T&T.

“Of course, we will dis­cuss this at the com­mis­sion­ers lev­el,” she added.

 Killings in T&T and il­le­gal firearms

• Ap­prox­i­mate­ly 87 per cent of the killings in T&T are as a re­sult of firearms.

• Be­tween 2009 and 2019, 6,387 peo­ple were charged with firearm pos­ses­sion.

• For this same pe­ri­od, 1,619 mur­ders were com­mit­ted with firearms.

• Of this fig­ure, 638 were clas­si­fied as gang-re­lat­ed mur­ders.

• Over these ten years, a to­tal of 17,271 firearm-re­lat­ed of­fences were com­mit­ted.

• From 2017 to 2022, the TTPS seized 28,000 guns worth $350 mil­lion.

• This year so far the TTPS has con­fis­cat­ed 219 il­le­gal firearms and 6,821 rounds of am­mu­ni­tion.