In the past few weeks, the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice (TTPS) has made sig­nif­i­cant gun hauls but to date, no one was ar­rest­ed for the cache of ar­se­nal that in­clud­ed AR-15s, M16s, mi­ni Uzis, 50 cal­i­bre ri­fles and 12-gauge shot­guns.

Il­le­gal weapons have been flood­ing the streets of T&T for the past decade.

Se­nior Su­per­in­ten­dent Rishi Singh, the head of the Homi­cide Bu­reau of the TTPS, said ap­prox­i­mate­ly 88 per cent of all homi­cides in the coun­try are com­mit­ted us­ing a firearm.

Where are the il­le­gal guns com­ing from? What’s the street val­ue of a gun? How easy is it to get one? And what’s the mar­ket de­mand for the weapons? This is an ex­clu­sive re­port from Guardian Me­dia’s In­ves­ti­ga­tions Desk.

In­ves­ti­ga­tions Desk

(Joshua Seemu­n­gal, Shal­iza Has­sanali, Jensen La Vende and Asha Javeed)

Most gun deaths in the coun­try oc­cur with a Glock. Most rob­beries too.

It is the most com­mon il­le­gal weapon on the streets of T&T.

And of­ten, it is fit­ted with ma­chine-fab­ri­cat­ed de­vices to make it au­to­mat­ic.

The street val­ue of a Glock starts at $3,000 and can go up to $12,000 or more de­pend­ing on who you get it from and how it is sourced.

It can be bought or rent­ed, again, de­pend­ing on the pur­pose or na­ture of the job for which it is want­ed. Gun deal­ers told the Sun­day Guardian that it is “de­pend­able” to get the “job” done.

Then there are var­i­ous mod­els of ri­fles: Av­tomat Kalash­niko­va (AK)  and Ar­maLite (AR)-15s.

“It can be rent­ed for cheap­er de­pend­ing on the mod­el, much cheap­er than even a le­gal gun is sold for. Ri­fles can go from $30,000 up but again, it is cheap­er to rent from a gang,” one source said.

“Pis­tols of any mod­el are sought out for rob­bery for ease of con­ceal­ment how­ev­er, ri­fles have be­come a ‘sta­tus sym­bol’ in the un­der­ground and are used in a prac­ti­cal sense for hits, along­side what­ev­er else they can get their hands on. For in­stance, pis­tols with au­to­mat­ic mod­i­fi­ca­tions are pre­ferred along­side the ri­fles,” the source added.

The il­le­gal gun trade is a mul­ti-mil­lion dol­lar, cash-based busi­ness, and ac­cord­ing to sources, the de­mand is high and in­creas­ing as the coun­try’s crime sit­u­a­tion de­te­ri­o­rates.

The pro­lif­er­a­tion of crime and guns are linked, they said.

Busi­ness­men get il­le­gal Glocks to pro­tect them­selves

... How did they do it?

At least two busi­ness­men ad­mit­ted to the Sun­day Guardian that they ac­quired il­le­gal Glocks to pro­tect them­selves from po­ten­tial crim­i­nals as they were not able to se­cure a firearm user’s li­cence (FUL).

“It was easy enough, every­one knows some­one. It all de­pends on how far you are will­ing to go to get it. I didn’t do it my­self, I didn’t want to be iden­ti­fied be­cause then you be­come a tar­get too. If you don’t have a gun, you are a tar­get for crim­i­nal el­e­ments. If you have one, you are al­so a tar­get, but at least, you can pro­tect your­self,” one of them told the Sun­day Guardian.

Il­le­gal gun deal­er: De­mand for the Glock is high

“The price of the gun de­pends on what you want. If you want a gun like a .38—an old-time sort of spin bar­rel gun—you could get that for about TT$4,000. Now a Glock 17 or 18 is about TT$14,000 up … The shot de­pends on the mag­a­zines you use … The Glock is de­pend­able. You can buss a lot of shots in dif­fer­ent con­di­tions. The oth­ers may melt. I saw the 9s buss and it jammed. That could get you killed,” said a gun deal­er named De­lano.

Smooth, down-to-earth and well-dressed, De­lano works a de­cent, well-re­spect­ed job.

Hail­ing from an area con­sid­ered a ‘hotspot’, he grew up with some friends and fam­i­ly mem­bers in­volved in the cannabis trade, who, in turn, knew how to han­dle guns. In his youth, he was clos­er to that life but stepped away for fam­i­ly rea­sons. How­ev­er, un­sus­pect­ing to most, he still oc­ca­sion­al­ly sells guns—pis­tols and re­volvers to be ex­act—to sup­ple­ment his in­come.

“The last one I got, I got it for $11,000 and sold it for $14,000 … I mark up and sell be­cause I have the con­nec­tion … I deal with guys from (names place) … be­cause they have boats. They do the run­ning on their boats and they are the ones who re­al­ly make the mon­ey,” De­lano re­vealed.

De­lano first be­came as­so­ci­at­ed with gun sales when he used to put up mon­ey with a group of rel­a­tives/friends to pur­chase cannabis from Venezuela to sell in Trinidad. Boat­men from a lo­cal fish­ing com­mu­ni­ty would go to Venezuela, bring as much as 100 pounds of cannabis back, and the group would split the prof­its of the sale.

As part of the arrange­ment with the Venezue­lan deal­ers, the group re­ceived two or three guns for free.

“The man who owns the boat and knows the men sell­ing the weed from Venezuela will get two or three firearms as part of the deal. Re­mem­ber, Venezuela is full of guns. They let you know when you are deal­ing drugs, there are peo­ple who will come for you. So every time they make a run, they get guns. So you could ei­ther use them to pro­tect your busi­ness or sell them. It’s 100 per cent prof­it on the guns be­cause they didn’t pay for the guns.

“The guns have dif­fer­ent brands. If you are sell­ing a Glock and it’s an Aus­tri­an brand, for ex­am­ple, it’s way more mon­ey for it. If you get that kind of gun, you get your mon­ey’s worth. It is in high de­mand,” he said.

De­lano be­gan buy­ing the firearms from the boat­men and his as­so­ciates and sell­ing them, of­ten to gang mem­bers, for a marked-up price. He would eas­i­ly make be­tween $3,000 to $8,000 prof­it per firearm.

“It’s a way to make an ex­tra dol­lar … Some­one will come and ask for a firearm. I’ll say, what do you want? What kind of firearm? Be­cause I will al­ways have it … Then we will meet up and ex­change.

“All Glocks are in high de­mand. And once you say Glock, you are look­ing at TT$17,000 or TT$19,000. The last one some­one asked me for was a 23 … I have my firearm too. These days you have to have some­thing on you,” De­lano said.

The part-time deal­er, who sells less fre­quent­ly now, said once he sells a firearm, the buy­er re­ceives it with am­mu­ni­tion. He asks no ques­tions about what they will be used for.

But he claimed in­creas­ing­ly the younger gen­er­a­tion seems more in­ter­est­ed in big­ger guns—like ma­chine guns, firearms he does not dare touch. He said it was about an im­age for them; a lifestyle.

“The big­ger guns—I have nev­er dealt with ARs—a lot of them are com­ing in from the Unit­ed States. It’s true that it’s com­ing in from the ports. It’s not small men bring­ing in those guns. The scan­ners are scan­ning what they want to scan. They on­ly scan cer­tain things, so you can’t stop that.

“It’s $30,000 and up for a ma­chine gun. Some of those ARs even have si­lencers. If you see the youths who are us­ing it or stash­ing it, you can’t imag­ine where they are liv­ing. It’s some of the poor­est set of con­di­tions you will ever see. They can­not be bring­ing in those guns, be­cause they can­not af­ford it. It’s a look, a lifestyle be­cause they are not get­ting any­thing else out of it. They walk around with rub­ber slip­pers, old clothes and an ex­pen­sive firearm that most of the time isn’t even theirs. They are hold­ing it for some­one or they are sell­ing drugs for some­one and they were giv­en that,” De­lano said.

He said many of the ‘man on the ground’ drug and gun-sell­ing op­er­a­tions form in prison. So when the State be­lieves they are tack­ling the prob­lem by lock­ing away crim­i­nals, he said, the im­pris­oned see an op­por­tu­ni­ty to make con­nec­tions.

He said more peo­ple are sell­ing guns, cannabis and oth­er drugs than many peo­ple think. He said, af­ter all, with the sig­nif­i­cant in­crease in the cost of liv­ing, peo­ple are do­ing what they have to do to sur­vive, even if it means break­ing the law, mur­der­ing or risk­ing their deaths.

Black mar­ket guns

TTPS da­ta pro­vid­ed to the Sun­day Guardian showed that the Glock and Beretta 9mm pis­tols are the most com­mon­ly used il­le­gal firearms by crim­i­nals in T&T.

In 2023, so far, 322 pis­tols and 99 re­volvers were re­cov­ered by the TTPS com­pared to 396 pis­tols and 117 re­volvers in 2022.

The largest haul re­cov­ered was in 2017–of the 1,064 il­le­gal weapons seized, 572 were pis­tols and 264 were re­volvers.

Since 2016, the TTPS be­gan re­triev­ing il­le­gal sub-ma­chine guns, with the largest amount—23—be­ing picked up in 2017.

Table 1

Marvin Smith

The da­ta showed that pis­tols ac­count­ed for more than half, 52.8 per cent of 3, 883 il­le­gal guns re­cov­ered be­tween Jan­u­ary 2014 and Oc­to­ber 19, 2023.

Re­volvers such as Smith & Wes­son, Rugers, Colts and .357 Mag­nums–are the sec­ond gun of choice ac­count­ing for 22.6 per cent of 1,663 re­cov­ered firearms for the same pe­ri­od.

Shot­guns ac­count­ed for nine per cent of all re­cov­er­ies, while home­made shot­guns and pis­tols both rep­re­sent­ed a lit­tle more than five per cent each.

 TTPS/Strate­gic Ser­vices Agency sources said the cost of a gun on the black mar­ket varies great­ly, de­pend­ing on the source.

The Sun­day Guardian looked at the rough es­ti­mate of black mar­ket prices:

* A re­volver can go for around $12,000. (For­mer act­ing po­lice com­mis­sion­er Mc­Don­ald Ja­cob quot­ed this fig­ure as well at a press con­fer­ence in No­vem­ber 2022);

* Pis­tol–$18,000 to $21,000;

* Shot­gun–$11,000 to $15,000;

* Ri­fle–$30,000 to $40,000;

* Ma­chine gun or sub-ma­chine gun– $35,000 to $40,000. The sources quot­ed be­tween $40,000 to $52,000 for an AR-15 or AK-47.

‘As TTPS re­moves guns from streets, more come’

Crim­i­nol­o­gist Dr Dau­rius Figueira said the prices quot­ed ap­ply to dif­fer­ent sup­ply seg­ments of the T&T il­lic­it gun mar­ket, but a buy­er can pay low­er or high­er prices de­pend­ing on what sup­ply side of the pipeline the buy­er has en­tered. He said that the in­ter­dic­tions of gov­ern­ment agen­cies in T&T and sup­ply coun­tries have not re­sult­ed in sup­ply-side short­ages or ris­es in prices.

Dr Figue­ria al­so be­lieved that the re­moval of guns from the streets by the TTPS has not im­pact­ed sup­ply, re­sult­ing in pipelines that con­tin­ue to flour­ish and the ap­pear­ance of new sup­ply lines.

“You can get re­volvers, shot­guns and bolt ac­tion ri­fles cheap­er or at high­er prices de­pend­ing on your ac­cess, like­wise with the AR-15, AK-47 and ma­chine and sub­ma­chine guns. We now have op­er­a­tion gun bro­kers in the US who deal di­rect­ly with clients who are pur­chas­ing ship­ments of mul­ti­ple prod­ucts. They get the best prices, es­pe­cial­ly on se­mi-au­to­mat­ic hand­guns, ma­chine and sub­ma­chine guns and se­mi-au­to­mat­ic as­sault ri­fles. These prices are un­beat­able on the mar­ket.

“Then you have transna­tion­al or­gan­ised crime who im­port for the use of their af­fil­i­ates and do not sell to third par­ties. These af­fil­i­ates are out­fit­ted as fol­lows: a se­mi-au­to pis­tol, a 12 gauge pump shot­gun, an AR-15 or AK-47 or both. This is dri­ving the arms race in T&T. Gun parts and the in­puts and ma­chine to load bul­lets are al­so im­por­tant. The rest have then to fol­low suit,” Dr Figueira said.

Ac­cord­ing to the find­ings of a 2020 Firearms Traf­fick­ing Glob­al Study by the Unit­ed Na­tions Of­fice on Drugs and Crime, there is am­ple avail­abil­i­ty of hand­guns in the il­lic­it mar­ket in the Caribbean.

“The cost of buy­ing firearms in the il­lic­it mar­ket is usu­al­ly sig­nif­i­cant­ly high­er than in the il­lic­it sphere, re­flect­ing the ex­tra risks and prof­i­teer­ing in­volved in the black mar­ket. How­ev­er, there are ex­cep­tions in Latin Amer­i­ca and the Caribbean. For ex­am­ple, il­lic­it prices were low­er than the lic­it price for hand­guns.

“In Latin Amer­i­ca and the Caribbean, traf­fick­ers seem to use legal­ly man­u­fac­tured firearms and al­ter mark­ings to hide their ori­gin,” the re­port stat­ed.

Ac­cess to am­mu­ni­tion even more con­cern­ing

Guns with­out am­mu­ni­tion are use­less.

The TTPS da­ta re­vealed that be­tween Jan­u­ary 14 and Oc­to­ber 19, 2023, the po­lice re­cov­ered more than 148,500 bul­lets–each ca­pa­ble of end­ing a life.

The most com­mon type of am­mu­ni­tion re­cov­ered by the TTPS dur­ing the pe­ri­od was the 9mm bul­let, ac­count­ing for 34.6 per cent of all re­cov­er­ies.

The 0.22 cal­i­bre bul­let was the sec­ond most re­cov­ered type of am­mu­ni­tion, ac­count­ing for 22 per cent of all re­cov­er­ies.

Re­tired reg­i­ment of­fi­cer Ma­jor Dirk Barnes said while guns in the hands of crim­i­nals are a prob­lem, ac­cess to am­mu­ni­tion is even more con­cern­ing.

“A ri­fle, ver­sus a pis­tol, ver­sus a ma­chine gun, none of them is more pow­er­ful than the oth­er. Let’s get that clear. If you un­der­stand that no weapon can be more pow­ered than the oth­er, it’s just pieces of ma­chin­ery with mov­ing parts, you will start to un­der­stand im­me­di­ate­ly that it doesn’t make sense try­ing to clas­si­fy a weapon as a high-pow­ered weapon. When you start to talk about weapons you have to look at the am­mu­ni­tion that weapon can dis­charge.

“Some of these ‘old’ ri­fles that you are see­ing can still dis­charge 5.56 and 7.62 pro­jec­tiles just as an AR-15 which you may be con­sid­er­ing new. If you have the old ri­fle and the new ri­fle us­ing the same 5.56 am­mu­ni­tion, it is go­ing to do the same dam­age,” Barnes said.

Barnes said while the coun­try should be deeply con­cerned by the type of guns be­ing seized by po­lice, the re­al pow­er is not in the gun, but the am­mu­ni­tion.  

“Pri­or to 2019, 2020, the nine-mil­lime­tre pis­tol es­pe­cial­ly was the weapon of choice for crim­i­nals. This was al­so con­firmed when I spoke to col­leagues who work in the Foren­sic Sci­ence Cen­tre, who said they would have got­ten a lot of emp­ty cas­ings com­ing in from nine-mil­lime­tre weapons and re­volvers. Now that has changed where we see a lot more 5.56 and 7.62 cal­i­bre rounds.”

He said the fear of as­sault ri­fles was not wrong as any gun in the hands of a crim­i­nal, which he stressed was not just a ban­dit, but the “good boy” who buys an il­le­gal gun to pro­tect him­self, was a threat.  

From 2014 to Oc­to­ber 2023: More than $125 mil­lion in il­le­gal firearms re­cov­ered

At the Crime Sym­po­sium in April, Prof An­dres Rengi­fo of the School of Crim­i­nal Jus­tice at Rut­gers Uni­ver­si­ty (Newark) at the CARI­COM Crime Sym­po­sium used an eco­nom­ic cost of US$350,000 per mur­der.

Rengi­fo, in his pre­sen­ta­tion, said that the more than 4,100 homi­cides (over 80 per cent in­volv­ing firearms) since 2014 have cost the coun­try more than $9.8 bil­lion (TT) in eco­nom­ic loss­es.

Based on Prof Rengi­fo’s cal­cu­la­tions, mur­ders in the North­ern Di­vi­sion alone–cov­er­ing St Joseph, Ari­ma, Arou­ca, La Hor­quet­ta, Mal­abar, Mal­oney, Mara­cas/St Joseph, Pi­ar­co, Cu­mu­to and Tu­na­puna–re­sult­ed in more than $2.2 bil­lion in eco­nom­ic loss­es.

The Sun­day Guardian used his fig­ure to tab­u­late costs by di­vi­sions.

TTPS da­ta showed that from 2014 to last month, 7,363 firearms have been re­cov­ered by the TTPS since 2014–an ap­prox­i­mate val­ue of more than $125 mil­lion in il­le­gal firearms for the pe­ri­od.

Table 1

Marvin Smith

Here is a break­down of that da­ta:

* TTPS sta­tis­tics show the North­ern Di­vi­sion is the gun vi­o­lence cap­i­tal of T&T. The di­vi­sion, ac­cord­ing to TTPS da­ta, record­ed 1,098 homi­cides be­tween Jan­u­ary 2014 and Sep­tem­ber 2023. That ac­counts for ap­prox­i­mate­ly 23 per cent of all mur­ders. The di­vi­sion is al­so the ge­o­graph­i­cal area where po­lice re­cov­ered the most il­le­gal firearms be­tween Jan­u­ary 2014 and Oc­to­ber 19, 2023. (See ta­ble 2) Ac­cord­ing to TTPS da­ta, 19 per cent of all firearms re­cov­ered–1,145–dur­ing that pe­ri­od were from the North­ern Di­vi­sion. It works out to more than US$2.8 mil­lion or TT$19.5 mil­lion worth of guns re­cov­ered in the di­vi­sion since 2014 (us­ing an av­er­age price of US$2,500 per firearm).

* Port-of-Spain Di­vi­sion (which the TTPS iden­ti­fied sep­a­rate­ly)–which cov­ers Bel­mont, PoS, Laven­tille, St Clair, and Wood­brook–record­ed 619 mur­ders be­tween 2014 and Sep­tem­ber 2023. The es­ti­mat­ed eco­nom­ic loss­es gen­er­at­ed by homi­cides in Port-of-Spain from 2014 was $1.3 bil­lion. De­spite rank­ing third in homi­cides and gun vi­o­lence fig­ures, the di­vi­sion ranked sixth in il­le­gal firearms re­cov­ered be­tween 2014 and Oc­to­ber 19, 2023, with 751 il­le­gal guns re­cov­ered dur­ing the pe­ri­od val­ued at more than US$1.8 mil­lion or TT$12.2 mil­lion (us­ing an av­er­age price of US$2,500 per firearm).

*  The South­ern Di­vi­sion–which cov­ers San Fer­nan­do, Bar­rack­pore, Gas­par­il­lo, Mara­bel­la, Mon Re­pos, Moru­ga, Princes Town, Debe, and Clax­ton Bay–is the area with the third most gun vi­o­lence in T&T, ac­count­ing for 576 homi­cides dur­ing the pe­ri­od Jan­u­ary 2014 to Sep­tem­ber 2023.  The homi­cides gen­er­at­ed an ap­prox­i­mate eco­nom­ic loss of TT$1.2 bil­lion. The di­vi­sion re­cov­ered the sec­ond most il­le­gal guns in the coun­try–1,161 firearms–15.6 per cent of all re­cov­er­ies. Again, us­ing the av­er­age price of US$2500, more than US$2.9 mil­lion or TT$19.7 mil­lion worth of guns have been re­cov­ered in the di­vi­sion since 2014.

* The Cen­tral Di­vi­sion–which cov­ers Ch­agua­nas, Cou­va, Ca­roni, Long­denville, Cunu­pia and Flana­gin Town–is the ge­o­graph­i­cal area that gen­er­at­ed the sec­ond high­est amount of eco­nom­ic loss­es caused by homi­cides with $1.4 bil­lion. Be­tween Jan­u­ary 2014 and Sep­tem­ber 2023, 688 peo­ple were mur­dered in the di­vi­sion. Mean­while, the di­vi­sion ranked third in the num­ber of il­le­gal firearms re­cov­ered by the TTPS - 1,048 or 14 per cent of all re­cov­er­ies, which works out to more than US$2.6 mil­lion or TT$17.7 mil­lion.

Part 2, The hu­man cost of gun vi­o­lence in Mon­day’s Guardian.

Be view­ing the CNC3 news at 7 tonight.