Chester Sam­bra­no

Lead Ed­i­tor–News­gath­er­ing

chester.sam­bra­no@guardian.co.tt

The Trinidad and To­ba­go Po­lice Ser­vice (TTPS) made a sig­nif­i­cant dent in the drug trade, af­ter re­cov­er­ing 1,560 kilo­grammes of “creepy mar­i­jua­na” with an es­ti­mat­ed street val­ue of $171,205,320 in the Ca­roni Swamp on Wednes­day night.

More sig­nif­i­cant­ly was the fact that the in­tel­li­gence re­port­ed­ly came via the US-in­stalled radar at Crown Point, To­ba­go.

The op­er­a­tion in­volved the Mul­ti-Op­tion Po­lice Sec­tion (MOPS) of the Spe­cial Branch, the Coastal and Air Sup­port Unit (CA­SU), the Spe­cial In­ves­ti­ga­tions Unit (SIU), and oth­er in­ves­tiga­tive, tac­ti­cal, and in­tel­li­gence teams, a TTPS re­lease said yes­ter­day.

It said of­fi­cers nav­i­gat­ed the man­groves overnight to re­cov­er the stashed car­go, which was trans­port­ed to Ch­aguara­mas He­li­port yes­ter­day for pro­cess­ing by SIU and CSI.

How­ev­er, no ar­rests were made and in­ves­ti­ga­tions are con­tin­u­ing.

In a re­lease yes­ter­day, the TTPS said the seizure was the first made us­ing da­ta from the new­ly in­stalled radar sys­tem, a US-sup­plied, mil­i­tary-grade unit ca­pa­ble of 360-de­gree long-range aer­i­al and mar­itime sur­veil­lance, in­clud­ing low-al­ti­tude air­craft and ves­sels. The sys­tem was in­stalled to strength­en na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty and com­bat drug and gun smug­gling.

In a pre-record­ed video re­lease, filmed af­ter the seized drugs were of­floaded in Ch­aguara­mas, Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Al­lis­ter Gue­var­ro said the op­er­a­tion marked a sig­nif­i­cant mile­stone for the TTPS.

“It was a pleas­ant, good day, Trinidad and To­ba­go. We were here in Ch­aguara­mas at the cul­mi­na­tion of a very suc­cess­ful ex­er­cise which should have been an all-night op­er­a­tion by the Trinidad and To­ba­go Po­lice Ser­vice in col­lab­o­ra­tion with oth­er arms of law en­force­ment,” he said.

Gue­var­ro praised the radar sys­tem’s ef­fec­tive­ness and is­sued a stern warn­ing to crim­i­nals.

“Know that we were com­ing for you. Know that the TTPS would be re­lent­less in its search for you. And to kind­ly de­sist from flood­ing our streets with that, be­cause you would not like the out­come. And as I al­ways say, the vengeance of moko will fall on you,” he said.

Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Roger Alexan­der, who was al­so on hand, ac­knowl­edged the col­lab­o­ra­tion be­hind the op­er­a­tion.

“Be­cause I un­der­stood what took place here ac­cord­ing to the op­er­a­tion. And we al­so want­ed to thank our for­eign coun­ter­parts who saw it fit, with the ap­pli­ca­tion com­ing from the Prime Min­is­ter, to pro­vide us with some tech­nol­o­gy that we were able to im­ple­ment for suc­cess,” he said.

In­spec­tor Ron­ny Ram­pal­lard, of the CA­SU, who spear­head­ed the op­er­a­tion, de­scribed it as “a tremen­dous ex­er­cise” and high­light­ed the chal­lenges faced by of­fi­cers on the ground.

“In­tel­li­gence-led polic­ing, and noth­ing short of the con­tri­bu­tion of every sin­gle mem­ber of every sin­gle branch, sec­tion and unit and or­gan­i­sa­tion that the com­mis­sion­er men­tioned pre­vi­ous­ly. These ef­forts some­times go un­no­ticed,” Ram­pal­lard said.

“What I can tell you from be­ing there on the ground, it was ex­treme­ly harsh ter­rain, hos­tile ter­ri­to­ry. And you know, the men and women who took part in this ex­er­cise, I want to ap­plaud them for the hu­man ser­vice that was pre­sent­ed here to­day. And again, just as the com­mis­sion­er and min­is­ter men­tioned, it’s a col­lab­o­ra­tive ef­fort. Crime fight­ing is not just the po­lice alone. It’s every­body, both lo­cal­ly and in­ter­na­tion­al­ly. I want to thank every­body.”

The in­stal­la­tion of the radar had sparked pub­lic de­bate and con­tro­ver­sy, af­ter its set­up oc­curred with­out any pub­lic an­nounce­ment.

How­ev­er, the first im­ages of the equip­ment and the pres­ence of a US mil­i­tary trans­port air­craft prompt­ed ques­tions about trans­paren­cy, with some lo­cal po­lit­i­cal lead­ers and civ­il groups in To­ba­go say­ing they were not con­sult­ed.

Crit­ics al­so raised con­cerns that the radar could be per­ceived as serv­ing strate­gic pur­pos­es be­yond lo­cal se­cu­ri­ty, in par­tic­u­lar the US in its mil­i­tary in­ter­ven­tion in the Caribbean, though of­fi­cials in­sist­ed it was sole­ly for do­mes­tic law en­force­ment.

Some tech­ni­cal and op­er­a­tional de­tails have re­mained clas­si­fied for na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty rea­sons.

Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar sub­se­quent­ly re­vealed that she had sought as­sis­tance from the US Em­bassy to get the radar in­stalled due to the in­ef­fec­tive­ness of the one the Gov­ern­ment met when it took of­fice.

She has since said that it will be used to curb drug and hu­man traf­fick­ing and the move­ment of sanc­tioned Venezue­lan oil in the re­gion.

Mixed re­ac­tion to bust

Re­act­ing to the seizure yes­ter­day, for­mer Na­tion­al Coastal Sur­veil­lance Radar Cen­tre di­rec­tor and Na­tion­al Trans­for­ma­tion Al­liance (NTA) leader, Nor­man Din­di­al, crit­i­cised the TTPS op­er­a­tion.

“This is vague! Which radar? The one the US in­stalled in To­ba­go? They say radar sys­tems re­cent­ly com­mis­sioned? Com­mis­sioned by whom? This is a bla­tant at­tempt to give some radar cred­i­bil­i­ty! The To­ba­go radar can’t see in the Ca­roni Swamp, pe­ri­od! Why haven’t they caught any sus­pect?” he ques­tioned.

For­mer po­lice com­mis­sion­er Gary Grif­fith al­so of­fered his per­spec­tive, warn­ing that the dis­clo­sure could un­der­mine op­er­a­tional se­cu­ri­ty.

“Well, it is good news that any­time there is a ma­jor drug seizure, it is good be­cause that ben­e­fits na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty. But there is the as­pect of the de­gree of con­fi­den­tial­i­ty. What val­ue is it that the po­lice will make it known that they now have a sys­tem that can be used to pin­point per­sons in the Ca­roni Swamp to deal with seiz­ing drugs?” Grif­fith asked.

“What you have just done is ba­si­cal­ly tipped off every sin­gle crim­i­nal el­e­ment, and know that the radar could be used to mon­i­tor them in the swamp. So, what was the val­ue of do­ing this? And as much as this is good that we have a sys­tem that can as­sist us in re­triev­ing il­le­gal drugs, this should have been some­thing, if any­thing, from the Min­istry of Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty.

“Be­cause in this very sen­si­tive sit­u­a­tion, with all of this de­bate on­go­ing about the radar, which by the way I will con­tin­ue to state I saw a val­ue for this to come as a re­lease from the Trinidad and To­ba­go Po­lice Ser­vice, it can give the per­cep­tion that the Min­istry of Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty draft­ed this and di­rect­ed the po­lice to re­lease this.

“Or if peo­ple will start to be­lieve that the po­lice ser­vice is now the PRO for the Gov­ern­ment. And that should not be the case. The po­lice ser­vice must al­ways be seen as be­ing in­de­pen­dent.”