The Trinidad and To­ba­go Po­lice Ser­vice says it con­tin­ues to make in­roads in­to the il­le­gal trade of nar­cotics and con­tra­band through le­git­i­mate ports of en­try, as of­fi­cers seized a quan­ti­ty of Ke­t­a­mine and US and lo­cal cur­ren­cy dur­ing sep­a­rate in­tel­li­gence-led op­er­a­tions this week.

The TTPS said on Wednes­day an in­tel­li­gence unit with­in the TTPS re­ceived in­for­ma­tion that iden­ti­fied a pack­age which was shipped from Queens, New York and des­tined to a con­signee in D’Abadie.

It said the de­scrip­tion of con­tents was doc­u­ment­ed as cof­fee and pack­aged food; how­ev­er, the pack­age was sus­pect­ed to con­tain con­tra­band.

“At­tempts were made to ap­pre­hend the lo­cal con­signee, how­ev­er, the sus­pect­ed per­sons nev­er ar­rived to col­lect the pack­age.”

The TTPS said con­se­quent­ly, the in­tel­li­gence unit, in col­lab­o­ra­tion with North­ern Di­vi­sion (ND) of­fi­cers pro­ceed­ed to the couri­er com­pa­ny, where the said pack­age was scanned and two of the sa­chets of cof­fee re­flect­ed anom­alies.

The two sa­chets were probed fur­ther and found to con­tain a white pow­dery sub­stance.

When test­ed, the sub­stance gave a pos­i­tive in­di­ca­tion to be that of Ke­t­a­mine.

The to­tal weight of the Ke­t­a­mine was 72.68 grams, with an es­ti­mat­ed street val­ue of $50,876. “ The TTPS will col­lab­o­rate with its in­ter­na­tion­al part­ners with a view of iden­ti­fy­ing and mon­i­tor­ing the sender of the pack­age.”

The TTPS added that al­so in ear­ly No­vem­ber 2023, the in­tel­li­gence unit re­ceived in­for­ma­tion which sug­gest­ed that an em­ploy­ee at the Port of Port-of-Spain, fa­cil­i­tates the smug­gling of nar­cotics and con­tra­band in­to and out of the port, con­cealed amongst le­git­i­mate car­go through var­i­ous car­go ves­sels.

Po­lice said the in­for­ma­tion sug­gest­ed that the port em­ploy­ee had plans to meet an ac­com­plice at the P.O.S. Port, to con­duct a pos­si­ble han­dover of nar­cotics and the ex­change of cur­ren­cy.

“ The TTPS de­vel­oped the in­for­ma­tion fur­ther, gath­ered in­tel­li­gence and iden­ti­fied the sus­pect­ed ac­com­plice and their ve­hi­cle. The team im­me­di­ate­ly act­ed on the in­for­ma­tion and through sur­veil­lance on Wednes­day 29th No­vem­ber, 2023, iden­ti­fied the ve­hi­cle at the CARI­COM Port, P.O.S.”

It said the in­tel­li­gence unit reached out to Cus­toms for op­er­a­tional sup­port and the ve­hi­cle was in­ter­cept­ed at the port.

The TTPS said dur­ing the search, the port em­ploy­ee and the oth­er sus­pect­ed ac­com­plice were iden­ti­fied as the oc­cu­pants of the ve­hi­cle. Po­lice re­port­ed­ly seized $1810 US and $46,015 TT which the ac­com­plice had in his pos­ses­sion.

Both peo­ple were lat­er con­veyed to the Cus­toms Di­vi­sion pend­ing fur­ther en­quiries.