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Sunday, February 23, 2025

Gunshot injuries put hospital resources under pressure

by

Jensen La Vende
468 days ago
20231112

Last week, the Sun­day Guardian re­port­ed on the cost and ease with which an il­le­gal gun can be pur­chased in T&T. The pro­lif­er­a­tion of il­le­gal weapons on the coun­try’s streets is linked to an in­crease in rob­beries and mur­ders. While the po­lice dis­play guns they have re­cov­ered, thou­sands of il­le­gal firearms re­main in the hands of crim­i­nals.

There is a hu­man cost to gun vi­o­lence, not just lives but liveli­hood. The wounds tell an­oth­er as­pect of the sto­ry on guns.

In Part 3 of this in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­to il­le­gal guns and am­mu­ni­tion, we ex­am­ine the wounds which peo­ple are show­ing up with at hos­pi­tals.

Se­nior Re­porter-In­ves­tiga­tive

jensen.lavende@guardian.co.tt

There has been a marked in­crease in gun­shot in­juries caused by high-pow­ered weapons. Dr Mar­lon Men­cia, a con­sul­tant or­thopaedic sur­geon at Port-of-Spain Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tal and lec­tur­er at the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies, said the cost of treat­ing the in­creased gun­shot wounds was ridicu­lous­ly high in T&T, but no one tru­ly un­der­stands that.  

“Treat­ing a gun­shot wound us­es re­sources be­yond which you can quan­ti­fy. There is blood and im­plants and oth­er things, which are scarce re­sources in our set­tings,” he said.

The de­mand for this type of surgery makes it dif­fi­cult or im­pos­si­ble some­times for peo­ple in dire need of treat­ment and elec­tive op­er­a­tions as hos­pi­tal re­sources are un­der pres­sure.

The con­cerned doc­tor said, “Those same re­sources can go to­wards can­cer pa­tients and what we call elec­tive surg­eries and they can’t get it and no­body looks at that. No­body looks at the cost.”

Men­cia left T&T in 1995 and re­turned ten years lat­er, hav­ing com­plet­ed his stud­ies, but be­fore leav­ing, he could not re­call see­ing a gun­shot wound caused by the 5.56 mm and 7.62mm am­mu­ni­tion. On his re­turn, he not­ed a con­tin­ued in­crease.

“We had gun­shot wounds be­fore, but noth­ing like what we are see­ing now. In fact, the most com­mon cause of a frac­ture to the fe­mur was a road traf­fic ac­ci­dent. But now, you are see­ing most peo­ple sus­tain those frac­tures by gun­shot wounds and a high­er per­cent­age are with high-ve­loc­i­ty weapons.

Men­cia said the dif­fer­ence be­tween a low and high-ve­loc­i­ty weapon in­jury is very dis­tin­guish­able, with the high­er ve­loc­i­ty in­juries tak­ing longer to heal and, in some cas­es, caus­ing the bone to heal mis­aligned or with a de­for­mi­ty.

“The fe­mur is the strongest bone in the body, you may have a bul­let hit­ting the fe­mur but not break­ing it where­as a high-ve­loc­i­ty mis­sile will shat­ter the fe­mur and dam­age the sur­round­ing tis­sues.

“A lot of our frac­tures of the fe­mur, which is the thigh bone, the tib­ia, which is the shin bone, come from gun­shot in­juries. But, of course, the high­er ve­loc­i­ty weapons cause more dam­age.

“We are def­i­nite­ly see­ing an in­crease, over the years, in firearm in­juries, but now an in­crease in high-ve­loc­i­ty in­juries caus­ing frac­tures. But the prob­lem is that all of this, all of this is anec­do­tal.”

At the Cari­com Crime Sym­po­sium last April, Prof An­dres Rengi­fo of the School of Crim­i­nal Jus­tice at Rut­gers Uni­ver­si­ty (Newark) 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 (TTD) in eco­nom­ic loss­es.

 As the streets re­main flood­ed with il­le­gal weapons, re­tired reg­i­ment of­fi­cer Ma­jor Dirk Barnes said be­yond the evil of guns is am­mu­ni­tion.

“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.”

 

Cost of am­mu­ni­tion

Da­ta from the Trinidad and To­ba­go Po­lice Ser­vice (TTPS) showed that be­tween Jan­u­ary 14 and Oc­to­ber 19, 2023, more than 148,500 rounds of am­mu­ni­tion were re­cov­ered. The most com­mon be­ing the 9mm rounds which ac­count­ed for 34.6 per cent of all re­cov­er­ies.

As of Oc­to­ber 19, po­lice seized 1,896 rounds of 7.62mm am­mu­ni­tion and 2,499 rounds of 5.56mm am­mu­ni­tion, the two types of am­mu­ni­tion used in ri­fles.

For that spec­i­fied pe­ri­od, the po­lice seized 11,942 rounds of 7.62 am­mu­ni­tion and 14,516 rounds of 5.56 am­mu­ni­tion.

Guardian Me­dia’s in­ves­ti­ga­tion showed that a gun can be as low as $11,000 to as high as $50,000 de­pend­ing on who you buy from and the type of gun pur­chased. A pis­tol can be bought for be­tween $18,000 to $21,000; a shot­gun for $11,000 to $15,000; a ri­fle can bleed your pock­ets for as much as $30,000 to $40,000; and a ma­chine gun or sub-ma­chine gun can cost be­tween $35,000 to $40,000 with the AR15 and AK-47 cost­ing be­tween $40,000 to $52,000.

Am­mu­ni­tion is equal­ly ex­pen­sive as the street val­ue can be at least six times the le­gal cost. A box of 9mm bul­lets, which con­tains 50 rounds, ob­tained legal­ly costs $250 to $300. Na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty sources said a box can go for $1,000 to $2,000 on the streets. Mean­while, 5.56mm and 7.62mm bul­lets can fetch $1,500 and $2,000 a box, re­spec­tive­ly.

Barnes said the in­creased scruti­ny placed on li­censed gun own­ers and deal­ers meant that there was now metic­u­lous check­ing of the stocks im­port­ed by gun deal­ers. He said as far as he was in­formed, every le­gal round of am­mu­ni­tion im­port­ed can be ac­count­ed for.

This, though, has been dis­put­ed by a se­nior po­lice of­fi­cer who asked to re­main anony­mous. The of­fi­cer, with over two decades of polic­ing, said am­mu­ni­tion can be sold by le­gal firearm hold­ers to crim­i­nals af­ter pre­tend­ing to use the am­mu­ni­tion at gun ranges.

“There is no mech­a­nism in place to en­sure that the rounds bought to use on a range were, in fact, used. So you can buy two box­es le­git­i­mate­ly, go to the range and fire two shots and sell the rest and re­turn to the deal­er and buy more,” he said.

Bal­lis­tics back­log dat­ing back decades

In 2021, then na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty min­is­ter Stu­art Young com­mis­sioned the Spe­cial Ev­i­dence Re­cov­ery Unit (SERU) based in Cu­mu­to. Then deputy po­lice com­mis­sion­er Mc Don­ald Ja­cob said the bal­lis­tics re­cov­ery de­part­ment and trained bal­lis­tics ex­perts would have as­sist­ed in ex­pe­dit­ing bal­lis­tic re­ports for use in court pro­ceed­ings.  

“The train­ing of these grad­u­ates, which was a com­bined ef­fort of the po­lice acad­e­my and the Foren­sic Sci­ence Cen­tre will as­sist tremen­dous­ly in deal­ing with the bal­lis­tics back­log at the Foren­sic Sci­ence Cen­tre and to deal with in­com­ing bal­lis­tics very quick­ly,” Ja­cob said then.

In No­vem­ber last year, Ja­cob, who at the time was the act­ing top cop, said with SERU up and run­ning, the wait time to iden­ti­fy bal­lis­tics and guns de­creased sig­nif­i­cant­ly.

In that in­ter­view, he said guns were now traced with­in sev­en days and fin­ger­print analy­sis went from ten days to com­plete to 48 hours.

Bal­lis­tics re­ports can be re­ceived with­in 72 hours, he said.

Se­nior sources at the Foren­sic Sci­ence Cen­tre said even with SERU, there still re­mains a back­log dat­ing back decades.

“What SERU has is a data­base of all le­gal firearms but there is still a back­log at the Foren­sic Sci­ence Cen­tre. What hap­pens is when a case is called, they pull that file and get the cer­tifi­cate analy­sis com­plet­ed for that case.”

The se­nior po­lice of­fi­cer said the bal­lis­tic back­log should have been cleared or in the process of be­ing cleared af­ter 19 po­lice of­fi­cers re­ceived bal­lis­tic train­ing, with 14 be­ing as­signed to the Foren­sic Sci­ence Cen­tre.

“Un­der Mc Don­ald Ja­cob there was a one-stop shop where the ar­mor­ers and bal­lis­tics ex­perts were at SERU and would ex­pe­dite cas­es on re­quests for both the ar­mor­er and bal­lis­tic re­ports. Be­cause of the vol­ume of re­ports to be done, I don’t think the back­log has been cleared but if a case is ur­gent, say it’s for tri­al, the re­ports can be ex­pe­dit­ed.”

As the TTPS aims to in­crease its fo­cus on sci­en­tif­ic ev­i­dence, the back­log at the Foren­sic Sci­ence Cen­tre was iden­ti­fied as some­thing that need­ed to be ad­dressed.

Mean­while, the US will al­so fund a re­gion­al foren­sic sci­ence cen­tre to fo­cus on firearms and am­mu­ni­tion.

The St Lu­cia-based cen­tre was an­nounced at the end of the Heads of Gov­ern­ment of the Caribbean Com­mu­ni­ty (Cari­com) meet­ing in Nas­sau, Ba­hamas, in Ju­ly.

The US said the as­sis­tance to con­struct the re­gion­al foren­sic sci­ence cen­tre was aimed at bring­ing the Caribbean up to in­ter­na­tion­al stan­dards that will meet the In­ter­na­tion­al Or­gan­i­sa­tion for Stan­dard­i­s­a­tion (IOS) ac­cred­i­ta­tion.

“The project will sup­port the col­lec­tion of time­ly, re­li­able, and ad­mis­si­ble foren­sic ev­i­dence to sup­port crim­i­nal in­ves­ti­ga­tions and pros­e­cu­tions, in­crease ef­fi­cien­cy, and help low­er case back­logs,” it said.

Le­gal guns in the il­le­gal trade

 In a sworn state­ment filed by Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Er­la Hare­wood-Chrsi­to­pher in May, the top cop said over 100 legal­ly sold guns have been used to com­mit crimes of mur­der, rob­beries and sui­cides.

Hare­wood-Christo­pher, who filed the state­ment in a case against gun deal­er Towfeek Ali who is su­ing the State for not al­low­ing him to im­port over three mil­lion rounds of as­sort­ed am­mu­ni­tion, said the US Bu­reau of Al­co­hol, To­bac­co, Firearms and Ex­plo­sives (ATF) and oth­er for­eign agen­cies in­formed the po­lice that some 30 guns im­port­ed by au­tho­rised gun deal­ers end­ed up in the hands of crim­i­nals, with at least one be­ing used in a mur­der.

The state­ment came even af­ter am­mu­ni­tion found at the crime scene had the mark­ing TTPS and TTR which rep­re­sent­ed the po­lice and reg­i­ment.

While the po­lice’s in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­to how its rounds end­ed up at crime scenes is still on­go­ing, the De­fence Force, in May, said all of its am­mu­ni­tion was ac­count­ed for and could not ex­plain how those shell cas­ings with those mark­ings end­ed up at crime scenes.

Lieu­tenant Colonel Shel­don Ra­manan in his ca­pac­i­ty as In­spec­tor Gen­er­al of the De­fence Force, at the re­quest of Chief of De­fence Staff Air Vice Mar­shal Dar­ryl Daniel, did an in­ter­nal au­dit and found that all of the am­mu­ni­tion giv­en to the reg­i­ment were ac­count­ed for.


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