Chester Sam­bra­no

Se­nior Re­porter/Pro­duc­er

chester.sam­bra­no@guardian.co.tt

A new spe­cialised unit has been formed to deal specif­i­cal­ly with gun crimes in the Caribbean.

This was re­vealed yes­ter­day by Ed­vin Mar­tin, Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice in the Roy­al Grena­da Po­lice Force and pres­i­dent of the As­so­ci­a­tion of the Caribbean Com­mis­sion­ers of Po­lice.

In an in­ter­view with Guardian Me­dia, Com­mis­sion­er Mar­tin said the new Caribbean Gun Crime In­tel­li­gence Unit had been formed, adding the unit will be work­ing un­der the am­bit of the Cari­com Im­ple­men­ta­tion Agency for Crime and Se­cu­ri­ty (Im­pacs).

He said it will be “a col­lab­o­ra­tive ef­fort across the en­tire re­gion with all mem­ber states con­tribut­ing in­di­vid­ual per­sons to work out of that unit, where it’s go­ing to be lo­cat­ed for the pur­pose of de­lib­er­ate­ly tar­get­ing the is­sue of gun crimes from both the tran­ship­ment method that is be­ing done, iden­ti­fy­ing in­di­vid­u­als in­volved and ul­ti­mate­ly prob­a­bly tak­ing down those net­works and or­gan­i­sa­tions.”

St Vin­cent and the Grenadines CoP and AC­CP sec­re­tary-trea­sur­er, Col­in John, added that the new unit will al­so not du­pli­cate the work of the Re­gion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Sys­tem (RSS).

“In fact, there will be col­lab­o­rat­ing with the RSS, mem­bers of the AFT De­part­ment, so it is a mat­ter of re­al­ly from the pur­chase of the firearm to the users away, once we iden­ti­fy it’s a firearm, we will be able to track and trace and de­vel­op ev­i­den­tial val­ue when pros­e­cut­ing per­sons,” John said.

Com­mis­sion­er Mar­tin said the is­sue of il­le­gal firearms com­ing from the Unit­ed States is be­ing ac­tive­ly ad­dressed on many lev­els

He said there are oth­er in­ter­na­tion­al part­ners they are col­lab­o­rat­ing with, such as the ATF (Al­co­hol To­bac­co and Firearms) unit in the US and In­ter­pol.

He said to treat with guns com­ing to the re­gion from the US, coun­tries are al­ready tak­ing in­di­vid­ual ac­tions like hard­en­ing their bor­ders and im­ple­ment­ing scan­ning de­vices and more ag­gres­sive pa­trols.

Both men are in T&T at­tend­ing the 37th An­nu­al Gen­er­al Meet­ing and Con­fer­ence of the AC­CP at the Hy­att Re­gency in Port-of-Spain.

Com­mis­sion­er Mar­tin said aris­ing out of the four-day con­fer­ence, which ends to­day, they will fi­nalise their new strate­gic plan with a new fo­cus. He said the strate­gic plan is about co­op­er­a­tion and col­lab­o­ra­tion among all com­mis­sion­ers to cre­ate safer com­mu­ni­ties across the re­gion.

“So, part of that strate­gic plan would be to iden­ti­fy how can the AC­CP tar­get re­gion­al and in­ter­na­tion­al as­so­ci­a­tions to lever­age train­ing, equip­ment and any oth­er need that the re­spec­tive forces may have,” Mar­tin said.

He said the AC­CP will al­so seek to try and de­liv­er what can best be done to help the coun­tries work to­geth­er in ad­dress­ing the threats that con­front the re­gion.

Among those threats, he said, are transna­tion­al or­gan­ised crime, in­clud­ing drugs, hu­man traf­fick­ing, firearms traf­fick­ing and cy­ber­crimes, which he said are mul­ti­di­men­sion­al and mul­ti-faceted in na­ture.

He added that at the con­fer­ence, com­mis­sion­ers ad­vanced and fi­nalised prepa­ra­tion for a new da­ta repos­i­to­ry.

Com­mis­sion­er Mar­tin stressed that there have been in­creased seizures of firearms and nar­cotics and tak­ing down transna­tion­al or­gan­ised crim­i­nal ac­tiv­i­ty, in­volv­ing il­le­gal mon­ey laun­der­ing and drug traf­fick­ing.

He said the net­work­ing of re­gion­al po­lice was cru­cial but said they al­so need com­mu­ni­ties to part­ner with them to help make the re­gion a safer place.