(Trinidad Guardian) Even as National Security Minister Fitzgerald Hinds has announced that police are engaged in an operation to remove an estimated 12,000 illegal firearms from the hands of criminals, one criminologist says guns and ammunition are entering through legal ports stuffed in items like bags of cement.
The revelation comes from Dr Randy Seepersad, who recently did a study on prisoners jailed for firearm offences.
As serious as the issue of illegal firearms is, criminals use many high-powered weapons to carry out frequent murders and Seepersad said the movement of such weapons is hard to stop.
The University of the West Indies lecturer said when these weapons enter through legal ports, they are difficult to detect without the right kind of scanning equipment.
“I was actually in the prisons interviewing prisoners who had been convicted of firearm offences or trafficking of firearms. One of them gave me an example of one of the means they used to bring firearms into the country, and they actually packed the firearms in cement bags. We are talking about cement bags filled with cement,” Seepersad said.
He added, “They would open one or a few, put the firearms in plastic bags, put them into the cement bags and seal the cement bags. Imagine there are three or four cement bags in a crate of cement. Nobody is going to go through that. Customs is not going to go through that. You know the weight of a bag of cement?”
Seepersad said investing in equipment that can scan containers and detect firearms and drugs is one way to crack down on this industry. However, he said once the State blocks one route, others will emerge. The reality is that T&T has porous borders and Seepersad also blames inadequate sea patrol vessels, as some are down due to poor maintenance.
During a visit to Hart’s Cut Bay in Chaguaramas two weeks ago, he said he saw three multimillion dollar Coast Guard (TTCG) vessels docked there as they were in need of small parts. The TTCG commissioned two Cape-class patrol boats, the TTS Port of Spain and TTS Scarborough, in 2021. However, Seepersad said they merely replaced inactive vessels instead of increasing the fleet.
“If we do not put these in the water to maintain the sea and have the staff to have the borders properly patrolled, we are going to continuously have problems. We have drugs coming in, we have firearms coming in nd they are coming in very easily.”
On Monday, acting Police Commissioner McDonald Jacob said the T&TPS had noted many illegal firearms were coming from the US.