Rhon­dor Dowlat

Se­nior Re­porter

rhon­dor.dowlat@guardian.co.tt 

In a sig­nif­i­cant crack­down on nar­cotics traf­fick­ing, the Trinidad and To­ba­go Po­lice Ser­vice (TTPS) ex­e­cut­ed an op­er­a­tion across the North­ern and North Cen­tral Di­vi­sions on Tues­day, where of­fi­cers dis­cov­ered sev­er­al con­tain­ers of hair cream filled with co­caine.

Dur­ing a sur­veil­lance op­er­a­tion, of­fi­cers iden­ti­fied a ve­hi­cle trav­el­ling along roads in the North East­ern Di­vi­sion. With sup­port from North­ern Di­vi­sion Po­lice, the ve­hi­cle was in­ter­cept­ed on the Churchill Roo­sevelt High­way near the Grand Bazaar shop­ping cen­tre. 

Of­fi­cers dis­cov­ered eight con­tain­ers la­belled "Shade Nat­u­rals" hair prod­ucts. Sub­se­quent field tests con­firmed these items con­tained co­caine, weigh­ing a to­tal of 3.25 kilo­grams, with an es­ti­mat­ed street val­ue of TT$4,530,240.

A 27-year-old man from 2B Tem­ple Street, Pa­pouri Road, San Fer­nan­do, was ar­rest­ed at the scene. 

Ac­cord­ing to po­lice, this is a ma­jor break­through which stems from an in­tel­li­gence-led op­er­a­tion that be­gan in 2023, un­cov­er­ing a so­phis­ti­cat­ed drug traf­fick­ing net­work based in South Trinidad. 

This net­work al­leged­ly im­port­ed nar­cotics from South Amer­i­ca, con­cealed with­in le­git­i­mate car­go, and ex­port­ed them us­ing lo­cal couri­er ser­vices. Fol­low­ing mul­ti­ple ar­rests and sig­nif­i­cant seizures over the past year, TTPS in­tel­li­gence units re­cent­ly re­ceived in­for­ma­tion about an im­pend­ing nar­cotics ship­ment.

Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice Er­la Hare­wood-Christo­pher re­marked, "In­tel­li­gence gath­er­ing is the cor­ner­stone of ef­fec­tive polic­ing. It al­lows us to an­tic­i­pate and dis­rupt crim­i­nal ac­tiv­i­ties be­fore they can in­flict harm on our com­mu­ni­ties. The suc­cess of this op­er­a­tion un­der­scores how crit­i­cal in­tel­li­gence is in our fight against crime."

The TTPS con­tin­ues to pur­sue leads to dis­man­tle this drug traf­fick­ing net­work, promis­ing fur­ther ac­tions to en­sure the safe­ty and se­cu­ri­ty of the na­tion.