Rishard Khan

rishard.khan@guardian.co.tt

Af­ter re­view­ing footage of Mon­day’s armed rob­bery at Pen­ny­wise Plaza, La Ro­maine, se­cu­ri­ty ex­perts say the Al­lied Se­cu­ri­ty Ser­vices of­fi­cers were “doomed to die” in the am­bush, which they be­lieve was well planned and re­hearsed.

Re­tired Ma­jor of the De­fence Force and Air Sup­port Tac­ti­cal Se­cu­ri­ty chief ex­ec­u­tive of­fi­cer Dirk Barnes, said while the crim­i­nals were pre­pared for the at­tack, they had no tac­ti­cal train­ing. De­spite this, he said, the sur­prise of the ve­hi­cle in­ter­dic­tion and vol­ume of fire over­whelmed the of­fi­cers.

“Doomed to die, that is what that was be­cause they were out­gunned, the en­e­my had su­pe­ri­or fire­pow­er, had more sus­tain­able am­mu­ni­tion and on top of that, they would have come with ar­mour de­feat­ing rounds be­cause 5.56 would have passed through the tra­di­tion­al lev­el II­IA vests that most se­cu­ri­ty of­fi­cers and po­lice of­fi­cers wear while on du­ty,” he said.

“So they did not have a chance at sur­viv­abil­i­ty.”

Fol­low­ing the in­ci­dent, many peo­ple ques­tioned why the of­fi­cers did not use an ar­moured ve­hi­cle in­stead of a reg­u­lar un­marked pick-up.

How­ev­er, ac­cord­ing to Barnes, their ap­proach was a tac­ti­cal­ly valid one and hav­ing such a ve­hi­cle would have made lit­tle dif­fer­ence.

“The rounds that are used, which would have been the 5.56, are ar­mour de­feat­ing rounds. If those were used, re­gard­less if it was a soft ve­hi­cle or an ar­moured ve­hi­cle, the out­come would have been the same,” he said.

If they were able to re­spond to the threat, Barnes said the same out­come was pos­si­ble be­cause they would not have been able to sus­tain the gun­fight with the as­sailants be­cause se­cu­ri­ty of­fi­cers are on­ly legal­ly al­lowed to car­ry 25 rounds of am­mu­ni­tion for their weapons.

The for­mer head of the Spe­cial Op­er­a­tions Re­sponse Team and founder of the MH Tac­ti­cal Re­sponse Group, Mark Her­nan­dez shared a sim­i­lar sen­ti­ment about the in­ci­dent’s sur­viv­abil­i­ty.

“As a pro­fes­sion­al, I would want to say that their op­tions would have been bank­rupt,” he said.

“They (the as­sailants) were us­ing the big­ger bang the­o­ry. They would have known that those of­fi­cers would have been armed so they used am­bush as the recipe for de­struc­tion. So they would have sup­pressed them and over­whelmed them with a high vol­ume of am­mu­ni­tion and de­feat the will of the per­sons.”

With the at­tack tak­ing place in broad day­light with shop­pers and oth­er mo­torists around, Her­nan­dez ad­vised peo­ple to al­ways be aware of their sur­round­ings and be ready to act in self-de­fence ear­ly enough to avoid be­com­ing vic­tims in such in­ci­dents.

The three Al­lied of­fi­cers were ex­it­ing the plaza af­ter col­lect­ing a large sum of cash Mon­day af­ter­noon, when a ve­hi­cle pulled in front of them.

Five gun­men im­me­di­ate­ly ex­it­ed the ve­hi­cle and opened fire at the of­fi­cers’ ve­hi­cle. Se­cu­ri­ty cam­era footage showed it on­ly took 38 sec­onds for the as­sailants to pull up, open fire on the of­fi­cers, take the bags of mon­ey and flee the scene.

Of­fi­cer Jef­frey Pe­ters, 51, re­port­ed­ly died at the scene while Jer­ry Stew­art, 49, died on the way to the hos­pi­tal.

The third of­fi­cer, Pe­o­la Bap­tiste, was shot in the head and re­mains ward­ed at the San Fer­nan­do Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tal.

Po­lice lat­er shot and killed four of the gun­men in a house a short dis­tance away in Pond Street, La Ro­main. Po­lice re­cov­ered an AR-15 at the scene of the rob­bery along with sev­er­al spent shells.

Ac­cord­ing to Barnes, these high-pow­ered ri­fles would not have en­tered the coun­try through any il­le­gal port.

“Those weapons did not come on a pirogue, it did not come on an il­le­gal port of en­try, it came through...le­gal ports of en­try. Those are AR-15s, (and) nor­mal­ly come from the Unit­ed States. It means that some­where in our sys­tem we had a cus­toms of­fi­cial who turned his head in the op­po­site di­rec­tion to al­low those weapons to en­ter Trinidad and To­ba­go. We need to face facts,” he said.

He said it is like­ly there are more AR-15s in the coun­try than those used in Mon­day’s at­tack.

Apart from ac­cess to the ri­fles, Her­nan­dez said, it is al­so con­cern­ing there is ac­cess to the 5.56 am­mu­ni­tion they re­quire.

While Barnes said am­bush­es were seen lo­cal­ly in the past, the cal­i­bre of weapon­ry is new. He fears this will lead to more brazen cash in tran­sit rob­beries and heists of cred­it unions and some re­mote banks.