Po­lice have seized quan­ti­ties of cannabis, firearms, am­mu­ni­tion and cash dur­ing a drug traf­fick­ing op­er­a­tion in Clax­ton Bay.

Ac­cord­ing to the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice (TTPS), the op­er­a­tion was aimed at dis­man­tling "a so­phis­ti­cat­ed and high­ly or­gan­ised drug net­work" be­ing run by a male sus­pect from the area.

In a re­lease, it said the ex­er­cise was car­ried out be­tween Tues­day and Thurs­day by of­fi­cers of a spe­cial­ist unit of the TTPS, who were as­sist­ed by per­son­nel from the T&T Coast Guard (TTCG) and De­fence Force (TTDF). It was co­or­di­nat­ed by DCP In­tel­li­gence and In­ves­ti­ga­tions Suzette Mar­tin.

The in­ter-agency ef­forts re­sult­ed in the seizure of a quan­ti­ty of high-grade Colom­bian mar­i­jua­na, an as­sault ri­fle, four mag­a­zines, one pis­tol loaded with a mag­a­zine and fit­ted with a se­lec­tor and 404 rounds of 5.56 am­mu­ni­tion, which were hid­den in a dense man­grove for­est area be­hind the sus­pect’s res­i­dence. A quan­ti­ty of cash to­talling $60,000 was al­so found hid­den in the ceil­ing of the res­i­dence.

Five ves­sels al­leged­ly be­long­ing to the sus­pect were con­veyed to Staubles Bay pend­ing in­quiries. The com­plex and chal­leng­ing en­vi­ron­ment of the man­grove, char­ac­terised by its thick veg­e­ta­tion and dif­fi­cult ac­ces­si­bil­i­ty, made the op­er­a­tion par­tic­u­lar­ly ar­du­ous. How­ev­er, it said the ex­per­tise of the river­ine units of the TTCG and TTPS en­abled the teams to ef­fec­tive­ly nav­i­gate the in­lets and con­duct thor­ough search­es.

The seized mon­ey was hand­ed over to the Fi­nan­cial In­ves­ti­ga­tions Bu­reau (FIB) for fur­ther for­fei­ture in­quiries.

"This op­er­a­tion was launched based on vi­tal in­tel­li­gence that in­di­cat­ed the sus­pect, a known drug traf­fick­er from the Clax­ton Bay dis­trict, had re­cent­ly im­port­ed a sig­nif­i­cant quan­ti­ty of nar­cotics from South Amer­i­ca," a TTPS state­ment said yes­ter­day.

The op­er­a­tion un­cov­ered that the sus­pect had con­struct­ed a man­made in­let con­nect­ing his prop­er­ty to the Gulf of Paria.

"This in­let, cou­pled with the pres­ence of sev­er­al ves­sels and en­gines ob­served in the vicin­i­ty, pro­vid­ed clear ev­i­dence of his in­volve­ment in a well-es­tab­lished drug traf­fick­ing op­er­a­tion," the TTPS said.

Com­ment­ing on the op­er­a­tion and the seizures, act­ing Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice Ju­nior Ben­jamin said, “The use of man­made in­lets and con­cealed ves­sels points to a high­ly or­gan­ised net­work, which the TTPS and its part­ners are de­ter­mined to dis­man­tle. Giv­en the on­go­ing na­ture of this in­ves­ti­ga­tion, all as­sets and re­sources are be­ing com­mit­ted to lo­cat­ing the nar­cotics, ap­pre­hend­ing those in­volved, and bring­ing the per­pe­tra­tors to jus­tice.”

He al­so com­mend­ed the hard work and syn­er­gies dis­played by all the agen­cies in­volved in the op­er­a­tion.