Shane Su­perville

Se­nior Re­porter

shane.su­perville@guardian.co.tt

Head of the Crim­i­nal Di­vi­sion, ACP Richard Smith, says as the TTPS con­tin­ues to in­ves­ti­gate in­stances where sus­pect­ed po­lice and De­fence Force spent shells are found at crime scenes, sev­er­al pos­si­bil­i­ties ex­ist as to how marked am­mu­ni­tion may end up in such lo­ca­tions.

One re­cent case un­der in­ves­ti­ga­tion oc­curred on the morn­ing of Feb­ru­ary 27, when Min­ford Al­ick of Jokhan Trace, Cara­po, was shot and killed at a gas sta­tion at the cor­ner of the East­ern Main Road and Gold­en Grove Road in Arou­ca. In­ves­ti­ga­tors re­port­ed that sev­er­al spent shells marked “TTPS” were re­cov­ered at the scene.

In the past, there have been sev­er­al in­stances where spent shells bear­ing TTPS, TT De­fence Force (TTDF) and TT Reg­i­ment (TTR) mark­ings were found at crime scenes.

Speak­ing with Guardian Me­dia yes­ter­day, Smith said once these items were found at crime scenes, a par­al­lel in­ves­ti­ga­tion was ini­ti­at­ed to try and iden­ti­fy the ori­gin of the am­mu­ni­tion used.

Smith not­ed that while au­dits, checks and in­spec­tions are done on a reg­u­lar ba­sis to en­sure all am­mu­ni­tion is­sued to po­lice of­fi­cers in dif­fer­ent de­part­ments are ac­count­ed for, there are oth­er al­ter­na­tive an­gles to con­sid­er.

“We must do our in­ves­ti­ga­tion as it re­lates to that and see if we have all the am­mu­ni­tion in our var­i­ous de­part­ments in the TTPS, as well as the De­fence Force, to en­sure they are ac­count­ed for and at least then we can dis­pel any ru­mours are giv­ing it out.

“The oth­er an­gle we can look at through our in­ves­ti­ga­tions is who are the peo­ple we hire, or who are the con­trac­tors to dis­trib­ute and sell us the am­mu­ni­tion, whether any­one from that an­gle may be steal­ing or sell­ing to peo­ple be­hind the scenes.

“So it’s not on­ly the in­di­vid­ual agen­cies, but who are the sup­pli­ers as well.”

Smith said in ad­di­tion to dai­ly checks, arms checks are done on a quar­ter­ly ba­sis to­geth­er with firearms in­spec­tions by se­nior po­lice of­fi­cers.

One of­fi­cer who asked not to be iden­ti­fied said all firearms and am­mu­ni­tion bought by the TTPS un­der­went bal­lis­tics test­ing at the Foren­sic Sci­ence Cen­tre, St James, be­fore they could be for­mal­ly is­sued to of­fi­cers in dif­fer­ent units and di­vi­sions.

He not­ed that all TTPS-is­sued am­mu­ni­tion is stored at the po­lice ar­moury and re­quests for am­mu­ni­tion are reg­u­lat­ed by strict record-keep­ing and re­quests to en­sure the chain of cus­tody is pre­served.

The of­fi­cer, how­ev­er, ac­knowl­edged that there may be “gaps” in over­sight when am­mu­ni­tion was is­sued to of­fi­cers for train­ing or field ex­er­cis­es.

“It of­ten­times comes down to the in­tegri­ty of the of­fi­cers who are us­ing the rounds.

“For in­stance, if you’re is­sued a cer­tain amount of rounds for train­ing, the in­struc­tors would have to be look­ing at every­one on a (shoot­ing) range to en­sure they use all the am­mu­ni­tion giv­en to them.

“There are some­times up to 30 peo­ple on a range; you would ex­pect peo­ple who are there to do the right thing, but it’s dif­fi­cult to keep track, es­pe­cial­ly when large amounts of am­mu­ni­tion are used per month for tar­get prac­tice.”

When con­tact­ed for com­ment, crim­i­nol­o­gist Dr Randy Seep­er­sad said the pres­ence of shells with these mark­ings was not by it­self ev­i­dence of the in­volve­ment of po­lice of­fi­cers, not­ing that such en­grav­ings could be forged or fal­si­fied by crim­i­nals in a bid to mis­lead in­ves­ti­ga­tors.

He said that while mech­a­nisms were in place to pre­vent the leak­age of po­lice-is­sued am­mu­ni­tion to the pub­lic, he felt that ad­di­tion­al mea­sures were need­ed to de­stroy spent shells to pre­vent mis­use.

“The spent shells is typ­i­cal­ly some­thing that is dis­card­ed, so what it means is that bet­ter mea­sures have to be put in place so the spent shells are de­stroyed in a way that they don’t end up back in­to the pub­lic do­main.

“One of the tech­nolo­gies avail­able to re­al­ly al­low you to trace a spent shell back to the fir­ing weapon is some­thing called mi­cro­stamp­ing where an al­phanu­mer­ic code is en­graved on the fir­ing pin of the gun, so when the fir­ing pin comes in­to con­tact with the back of the shell, it im­prints the code on the shell it­self, so if the shell is dis­card­ed, you can un­am­bigu­ous­ly trace the shell back to the weapon that fired that spe­cif­ic shell, so that’s one thing that can be con­sid­ered if the Po­lice con­sid­ers this to be a par­tic­u­lar is­sue.”

Dr Seep­er­sad, how­ev­er, ac­knowl­edged that in­tro­duc­ing this sys­tem can be a chal­lenge, as such cod­ing can on­ly be done at the point of man­u­fac­ture, where­as weapons al­ready in cir­cu­la­tion would not have these codes.

He there­fore stressed that the bal­lis­tics test­ing for bul­lets re­trieved from bod­ies or lodged in items was im­por­tant in de­tec­tion.

Spent shells from pro­tec­tive ser­vices found at crime scenes over the years

On De­cem­ber 11, 2022, busi­ness­man Chan­dan Ramjit was shot and killed on Three B’s Dri­ve, Ca­roni. Some of the spent shells at the scene bore the mark­ings ‘TTR’ sug­gest­ing they were is­sued to the Reg­i­ment.

On De­cem­ber 22, 2022, Nigel Mootoo and his son Nerkyle Mootoo, were gunned down near their Pi­ar­co home, with sev­er­al TT Reg­i­ment spent shells found at the scene.

On Au­gust 13, 2022, ten spent shells with the mark­ings ‘TTR’ were found at the mur­der scene of Gamal Wal­dron at Chin­napoo Gar­dens, Mor­vant.

On Au­gust 16, 2022, in­ves­ti­ga­tors found 20 spent shells with the mark­ings ‘TTAG’ at the mur­der scene of Rosanne Granger and Acori ‘Bless’ Ma­son in Aranguez.

On No­vem­ber 21, 2022, po­lice found 14 spent 9 mm shell cas­ings with the mark­ings ‘TTR’ on them at a shoot­ing in Techi­er Vil­lage, Point Fortin.

On Jan­u­ary 1, 2023, a woman was shot in her shoul­der while lim­ing in Mal­oney Gar­dens. A spent shell with the mark­ings ‘TTR’ was found at the scene.

On Ju­ly 24, 2023, nine spent shells with the mark­ings ‘TTPS’ were found at the mur­der scene of 36-year-old Keron Lewis in Pe­tit Val­ley

On De­cem­ber 5, 2023, po­lice found six spent shells with the mark­ings ‘TTR’ and four spent shells with the mark­ings ‘TTPS’ at the scene of Jabar­ri Williams mur­der in the park­ing lot of Tru­Val­ue Diego Mar­tin.

In No­vem­ber 2024, po­lice found sev­er­al spent shells with the mark­ings ‘TTR’ were found at the scene of Rob­by Latch­mans­ingh’s mur­der at the in­ter­sec­tion of Egypt Trace Ex­ten­sion and Crown Trace, En­ter­prise, Ch­agua­nas.

On Feb­ru­ary 26, 2025, a live round of 9mm am­mu­ni­tion with the mark­ing ‘TTR’ was found at the scene of Ra­jin­dra Sa­hadeo Ram­cha­ran’s mur­der at Sand­hill Road, Tabaquite.