Rhon­dor Dowlat

Se­nior Re­porter

rhon­dor.dowlat@guardian.co.tt

Po­lice ar­rest­ed three peo­ple and seized more than $6 mil­lion in high grade mar­i­jua­na and over $100,000 in TT and US cur­ren­cy dur­ing ex­er­cis­es on Los Iros and Siparia on Wednes­day.

The T&T Po­lice Ser­vice Po­lice (TTPS) said the ar­rests were the re­sult of months of work by an in­tel­li­gence unit to dis­man­tle a drug traf­fick­ing net­work on the south west­ern penin­su­la.

Of­fi­cers in the unit re­ceived in­for­ma­tion that the drug net­work was had been col­lect­ing large quan­ti­ties of diesel from var­i­ous ser­vice sta­tions in south Trinidad to trade at a high­er val­ue for nar­cotics from a South Amer­i­can drug traf­fick­ing net­work.

The TTPS gath­ered key in­tel­li­gence and con­duct­ed rig­or­ous and ex­ten­sive sur­veil­lance, which guid­ed them in a co­or­di­nat­ed ex­er­cise in Los Iros on Wednes­day. They ex­e­cut­ed a search war­rant at Per­sad Dri­ve where they found 60 bar­rels of fu­el. A man ar­rived and claimed to be the own­er of the fu­el but could not pro­duce doc­u­men­ta­tion was ar­rest­ed. The sus­pect, along with the seized fu­el, was tak­en to the Mara­bel­la Po­lice Sta­tion.

Act­ing on fur­ther in­for­ma­tion, the of­fi­cers con­duct­ed fur­ther sur­veil­lance and went to Mulchan Trace, Siparia, where a search war­rant was ex­e­cut­ed. While search­ing a white Toy­ota Aqua ve­hi­cle, the of­fi­cers found 80 pack­ets of high-grade mar­i­jua­na which weighed 43 kilo­grammes and had an es­ti­mat­ed street val­ue of $6,442,260. The of­fi­cers al­so found TT$125,500 and US$100 US cur­ren­cy in the ve­hi­cle.

The of­fi­cers seized the items and ar­rest­ed three sus­pects, who were tak­en to the Mara­bel­la Po­lice Sta­tion pend­ing fur­ther en­quiries.

Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice Er­la Christo­pher said: "Hard work­ing and ded­i­cat­ed of­fi­cers are out on the beat, work­ing to make our coun­try safe, and we are see­ing the ev­i­dence of their per­sis­tent and con­sis­tent ef­forts with yet an­oth­er mean­ing­ful seizure, that thwarts the plans of those in­volved in transna­tion­al crime.”

In­ves­ti­ga­tions are con­tin­u­ing.