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Wednesday, February 26, 2025

Killers with high-powered guns leave a trail of destruction in T&T

by

Charles kong Soo
913 days ago
20220828
AR-15

AR-15

Charles Kong Soo

The in­flux of high-pow­ered ri­fles and firearms smug­gled through T&T's porous bor­ders have caused alarm among law en­force­ment of­fi­cials and cit­i­zens alike, with the US-made AR-15 se­mi-au­to­mat­ic ri­fle in­creas­ing­ly favoured by gang mem­bers.

AR-15 ri­fles have fig­ured promi­nent­ly in sev­er­al dri­ve-by shoot­ings, hits, mur­ders, and oth­er crimes by un­der­world el­e­ments and have usurped the Russ­ian-made AK-47 style ri­fles as the weapon of choice.

Un­for­tu­nate­ly, po­lice of­fi­cers, in­no­cent chil­dren, and adults have al­so been killed and in­jured by stray bul­lets from these pow­er­ful firearms. The AR-15s 5.56 mm bul­let trav­els up to three times the speed of sound.

Dur­ing a press con­fer­ence two weeks ago, Act­ing Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Mc Don­ald Ja­cob said that 55 peo­ple have been killed and 18 oth­ers in­jured in 21 in­ci­dents in­volv­ing high-pow­ered ri­fles for the year thus far.

He said the po­lice had al­ready seized 60 of these firearms in the third quar­ter of this year (Ju­ly and part of Au­gust), com­pared to 61 high-pow­ered firearms for all of 2021.

Ja­cob said 408 il­le­gal guns have been seized for the year (Jan­u­ary to Au­gust), and 1,030 peo­ple were charged with gun-re­lat­ed of­fences.

What is al­so con­cern­ing is that in sev­er­al mur­ders, the spent rounds re­cov­ered were is­sued by the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice and De­fence Force.

Spent shells re­cov­ered af­ter 36-year-old busi­ness­man Ian Sobers, from Pe­tit Bourg, was gunned down on April 1, 2021, and Gar­vey Cam­po, 38, who was shot and killed on Jan­u­ary 8, 2019, in Arou­ca, bore TTPS mark­ings.

20 of 28 spent shells re­cov­ered by foren­sic per­son­nel in the mur­ders of Rosanne Granger, of Chi­napoo Vil­lage, Mor­vant, and Acori “Bless” Ma­son, of Bagatelle Road, San Juan, in Aranguez on Au­gust 16, bore the mark­ings of the T&T Air Guard on them.

Po­lice al­so found spent shells be­long­ing to the T&T Reg­i­ment at the scene of the killing of Gamal Wal­dron, who was await­ing tri­al on the charge of steal­ing a ve­hi­cle from for­mer jour­nal­ist Khamal Georges in 2018. The am­mu­ni­tion was 5.56 mm bul­lets, usu­al­ly used in high-pow­ered weapons such as AR-15s.

If the high-pow­ered weapons were not enough for law en­force­ment to con­tend with, grenades have al­so been dis­cov­ered by po­lice among a weapons cache.

In 2005, PC Omar Mara­jah was killed in a gun­fight be­tween po­lice of­fi­cers and ban­dits at JSL Speed­pak Com­plex, Pi­ar­co, when a grenade was al­so thrown in­to the car he was in and ex­plod­ed.

The large cache of guns and ammunition seized by police at a Central warehouse.

The large cache of guns and ammunition seized by police at a Central warehouse.

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Spent car­tridge shells a valu­able com­mod­i­ty, be­ing re­cy­cled

Crim­i­nol­o­gist Dau­rius Figueira re­vealed that crim­i­nals were re­load­ing their own am­mu­ni­tion by im­port­ing equip­ment such as re­load­ing press­es from the US and dis­trib­ut­ing the fin­ished prod­uct through­out the Caribbean, hence the rea­son why even spent car­tridge shells have be­come a very valu­able com­mod­i­ty and are be­ing re­cy­cled.

Speak­ing to the Sun­day Guardian, Figueira said "With an 'ex­plo­sion' of FULs giv­en out, there would be more spent car­tridges avail­able to be re­loaded by crim­i­nal el­e­ments.

"As the le­git­i­mate firearms deal­ers sec­tor ex­pands to deal with FUL hold­ers, some of them may be tempt­ed, and their ser­vices may spill over in­to the un­der­world.

"Since it was a spe­cialised field, gang mem­bers would need gun­smiths or ar­mour­ers with for­mal train­ing to ser­vice, re­pair, and con­vert their firearms to ful­ly au­to­mat­ic," Figueira said.

Daurius Figueira

Daurius Figueira

"While 'long-time' re­volvers were not the best for a fire­fight with a lim­it of on­ly six rounds, some car­tel hit­men pre­ferred them over a se­mi-au­to­mat­ic pis­tol," he added.

Ex­plain­ing the rea­son for this, he said un­like a se­mi-au­to­mat­ic pis­tol, a re­volver did not eject the spent car­tridge cas­ings; the dis­card­ed shell cas­ings can be­come ev­i­dence from fin­ger­prints or the 'bal­lis­tic fin­ger­prints' from the weapon it was fired from.

Dr Chan­dra Narayns­ingh was killed by hit­man Shawn Par­ris who shot her five times with a .38 re­volver in the car park at the Lang­more Health Foun­da­tion, on June 29, 1994.

Figueira said that as hit­men usu­al­ly work at close range to their tar­gets, they some­times pre­fer us­ing a small­er cal­i­bre round such as .22 to the back of the head. Figueira said a .22 round was qui­eter, and an ex­pe­ri­enced hit­man will use en­vi­ron­men­tal noise to mask or sup­press the gun­shots.

Heer­ah on Gun­shot de­tec­tion tech­nol­o­gy

Sun­day Guardian asked for­mer Na­tion­al Op­er­a­tions Cen­tre (NOC) head Garvin Heer­ah if gun­shot de­tec­tion tech­nol­o­gy (GDT) could be used in T&T to com­bat gun vi­o­lence.

Gun­shot de­tec­tion tech­nol­o­gy us­es a net­work of out­door acoustic sen­sors to au­to­mat­i­cal­ly tri­an­gu­late, de­tect, and no­ti­fy po­lice and law en­force­ment dis­patch­ers and of­fi­cers of the spe­cif­ic times and lo­ca­tions of firearm dis­charges.

Heer­ah said gun­shot de­tec­tion was a high­ly so­phis­ti­cat­ed tech­no­log­i­cal­ly-dri­ven tool and it had proven to be high­ly ef­fec­tive in many high-crime cities in the US.

He said, how­ev­er, it must be un­der­stood that tech­no­log­i­cal­ly-dri­ven polic­ing and crime-fight­ing in­volved a holis­tic ap­proach.

If such a sys­tem is con­sid­ered for in­tro­duc­tion in T&T, Heer­ah ex­plained, the readi­ness, ca­pa­bil­i­ties, and ca­pac­i­ty of the TTPS to ef­fec­tive­ly use this tech­nol­o­gy would need to be as­sessed.

This tech­nol­o­gy would in­volve a spe­cial type of in­ves­tiga­tive process cou­pled with new ar­chi­tec­ture and up­grades and com­ple­ment­ed by 24/07 read­ied re­spons­es.

He said that one would ques­tion such so­phis­ti­ca­tion in the crime-fight­ing ap­proach, as body cam­eras are still be­ing eval­u­at­ed in the field by po­lice of­fi­cers.

Ac­cord­ing to Heer­ah, gun­shot de­tec­tion tech­nol­o­gy was looked at be­fore but not con­sid­ered.

In 2012 for­mer na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty min­is­ter Jack Warn­er want­ed to im­ple­ment a gun­shot de­tec­tion sys­tem called "ShotSpot­ter", but it was nev­er done.

 Garvin Heerah

Garvin Heerah

ANISTO ALVES

Set up Firearms In­ter­dic­tion Unit

Say­ing that many of the weapons wield­ed by crim­i­nal el­e­ments were high-pow­ered au­to­mat­ic ri­fles with mil­i­tary and para­mil­i­tary bear­ings, Heer­ah felt that more needs to be done in solv­ing gun-re­lat­ed crimes.

He strong­ly be­lieves that the pro­tec­tive ser­vices may have to look at form­ing a Firearms In­ter­dic­tion Unit to fo­cus on il­le­gal firearms.

This unit, he said, should be close­ly con­nect­ed with the coun­try's in­ter­na­tion­al coun­ter­parts and be dri­ven by tech­nol­o­gy and in­tel­li­gence be­cause of the thriv­ing trade in il­le­gal arms and am­mu­ni­tion.

In Transna­tion­al Or­gan­ised Crime, this is known as SALW (Small Arms and Light Weapons) trade.

Heer­ah sug­gest­ed that just as when the coun­try was threat­ened by the on­set and in­crease in kid­nap­pings and the AKU (An­ti-Kid­nap­ping Unit) was formed, T&T should seek to es­tab­lish the Firearms In­ter­dic­tion Unit with spe­cialised in­ves­ti­ga­tors and should be prop­er­ly re­sourced. The unit should al­so seek to work close­ly with in­ter­na­tion­al agen­cies and push hard to win the war against the il­le­gal arms trade af­fect­ing the coun­try to­day, he said.

Heer­ah said the ex­ist­ing en­vi­ron­ment and spate of gun-re­lat­ed crimes should make the au­thor­i­ties des­per­ate enough to con­sid­er this ini­tia­tive

T&T's porous bor­ders/ports of en­try

Il­le­gal arms and am­mu­ni­tion are en­ter­ing T&T not on­ly from Venezuela, but dif­fer­ent re­gions. The Bo­li­var­i­an coun­try has be­come a con­duit where South Amer­i­can weapons are com­ing in­to T&T main­ly via pirogue, and North Amer­i­can weapons such as the much sought-af­ter firearms of gang mem­bers, AR-15 ri­fles were be­ing smug­gled in­to the coun­try via ship­ping con­tain­ers.

On April 22, 2021, po­lice and Cus­toms made a ma­jor dis­cov­ery of high-pow­ered guns, am­mu­ni­tion, and equip­ment dur­ing a raid at a Bond at Pi­ar­co In­ter­na­tion­al Air­port. An op­er­a­tion was car­ried out at the Bond, in­volv­ing of­fi­cers of the Cus­toms and Ex­cise Di­vi­sion, the Spe­cial In­ves­ti­ga­tions Unit (SIU), and the TTPS Crime Scene Unit. Dur­ing the search of the pack­age, the team dis­cov­ered 30 firearms, 762 rounds of as­sort­ed am­mu­ni­tion, po­lice sirens, po­lice blue lights, bul­let-proof vests, and mag­a­zine hold­ers.

Sev­er­al days af­ter, on April 26, po­lice of­fi­cers in an in­tel­li­gence-led op­er­a­tion un­cov­ered an­oth­er large cache of guns and am­mu­ni­tion at Med­way Ltd, a cus­toms ware­house, in Cou­va.

Re­gard­ing the ship­ment of guns seized, a source ex­plained that goods were x-rayed up­on re­ceipt pri­or to the is­su­ing of an air­way bill for air freight or a bill of lad­ing for ocean freight.

He said that the on­ly way those goods could come through was that the ex­porters were un­der sur­veil­lance by the ATF or law en­force­ment, some­one work­ing in the ship­ping com­pa­ny would have re­ceived the goods, let them by­pass the scan­ner sys­tem, and shipped them to Trinidad.

He al­leged that in or­der to clear that ship­ment, some­one from Cus­toms and Ex­cise had to be in­volved.

The man ex­plained that it would have been more pru­dent not to move and seize the guns but to wait for them to be cleared and see who were the of­fi­cers that ap­proved every­thing, check the pa­per trail and, ap­pre­hend all those in­volved.

There may be an­oth­er pos­si­bil­i­ty, he said, ex­plain­ing that they de­lib­er­ate­ly sac­ri­ficed sev­er­al guns and am­mu­ni­tion for the po­lice to find while the ma­jor ship­ment came in un­no­ticed at night by the sea.

The source al­so claimed that bribes are be­ing paid to look the oth­er way and let the guns pass.

He said that the sim­plest thing for transna­tion­al drug traf­fick­ing or­gan­i­sa­tions to do was to bribe the peo­ple who mon­i­tored port con­tain­ers.

He cit­ed as an ex­am­ple the port of Rot­ter­dam in the Nether­lands and the port of Antwerp in Bel­gium, where the cus­toms struc­ture was com­pro­mised or cor­rupt­ed and sev­er­al of their per­son­nel worked for transna­tion­al traf­fick­ers.

CrimeGuns and Ammunition


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