Shane Su­perville

Pi­ar­co po­lice are prob­ing the ori­gin of four AR-15s and a quan­ti­ty of am­mu­ni­tion that were found hid­den in a pack­age at a Trinci­ty ware­house on Fri­day af­ter­noon. Po­lice said of­fi­cers from the Pi­ar­co CID re­ceived in­for­ma­tion of weapons be­ing stored at the ware­house at around 5.30 pm and went to the area. On search­ing the ware­house, of­fi­cers found the com­po­nents of the four ri­fles hid­den in a hu­mid­i­fi­er.

Al­so seized were six mag­a­zines, 60 rounds of 7.62 am­mu­ni­tion, 80 rounds of 5.56 am­mu­ni­tion, 30 rounds of .38 am­mu­ni­tion and 30 rounds of .45 am­mu­ni­tion. No one was ar­rest­ed in re­la­tion to the find. How­ev­er, po­lice said they have some in­for­ma­tion on the ori­gin of the weapons and said “all an­gles” were be­ing cov­ered in their in­ves­ti­ga­tion, in­clud­ing a pos­si­ble link to the US.

“It is still a very re­cent de­vel­op­ment but we will be look­ing to see the for­eign link in this ship­ment and it is some­thing we are tak­ing very se­ri­ous­ly.” Dur­ing a me­dia brief­ing at White­hall, Port of Spain, on Tues­day, Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley said the sup­port of for­eign agen­cies like the FBI and the CIA can as­sist in clamp­ing down on the il­le­gal arms trade. “In Amer­i­ca you can go in a store and buy a truck­load of guns if you wish, in Trinidad and To­ba­go it’s a dif­fer­ent sys­tem but we have an in­ter­fac­ing.

“The peo­ple who are buy­ing those guns know Trinidad and To­ba­go, are prob­a­bly even cit­i­zens or fam­i­ly mem­bers of cit­i­zens or they see us as a place where they can make prof­it so we have a lot in com­mon with the US au­thor­i­ties.” Dr Row­ley dur­ing a re­cent vis­it to Wash­ing­ton DC met with se­nior of­fi­cials from both agen­cies and the Delaware Po­lice De­part­ment to dis­cuss se­cu­ri­ty. He said the shar­ing of in­tel­li­gence and in­for­ma­tion be­tween lo­cal and in­ter­na­tion­al law en­force­ment arms were crit­i­cal for crime-fight­ing suc­cess.