Derek Achong

A po­lice an­ti-crime ex­er­cise con­duct­ed on Tues­day night in re­sponse to a se­ries of mur­ders in Cara­po Vil­lage, Ari­ma re­sult­ed in the seizure of six il­le­gal firearms and more than 100 rounds of am­mu­ni­tion. The op­er­a­tion, which start­ed at 8 pm Tues­day and end­ed yes­ter­day morn­ing, was co­or­di­nat­ed by Se­nior Supt David Abra­ham of the North­ern Di­vi­sion.

Ad­dress­ing re­porters at the Arou­ca Po­lice Sta­tion yes­ter­day, Abra­ham com­mend­ed of­fi­cers of his di­vi­sion for their ef­forts in re­cov­er­ing the il­le­gal weapons. He not­ed that re­ports of se­ri­ous and vi­o­lent crimes with­in the di­vi­sion, which spans from St Joseph to Ari­ma, had re­duced for the year thus far. He said sim­i­lar ex­er­cis­es will be con­duct­ed reg­u­lar­ly as his of­fi­cers aimed to curb crime in the di­vi­sion's "hot-spot ar­eas."

In the ex­er­cise, a 22-year-old man, sus­pect­ed to be in­volved in sev­er­al mur­ders, was ar­rest­ed. Three of his rel­a­tives were al­so held dur­ing the raid on Kel­ly Trace, Cara­po. Po­lice said while search­ing the house they found two 9 mm pis­tols and 65 rounds of as­sort­ed am­mu­ni­tion.

All four are ex­pect­ed to ap­pear be­fore an Ari­ma mag­is­trate lat­er to­day. An 18-year-old man was al­so ar­rest­ed at his home in Bon Air Gar­dens, Arou­ca, af­ter the po­lice found a pis­tol hid­den in his bed­room. The po­lice al­so seized an­oth­er firearm at an aban­doned house in Ari­ma. The guns were tak­en to the Foren­sic Sci­ence Cen­tre for bal­lis­tic test­ing. Po­lice said the guns would be ex­am­ined to de­ter­mine if they were used in re­cent shoot­ings.

Mean­while, 21 oth­er res­i­dents of the com­mu­ni­ty were ar­rest­ed in the ex­er­cise for var­i­ous of­fences and 42 traf­fic tick­ets were is­sued to delin­quent dri­vers. Su­per­in­ten­dents Garth Nel­son and Oth­aneil Williams, In­sp Wayne Bap­tiste and Ramnaresh Seecha­ran and Sgts Bas­deo Sinanan and Ve­tus Her­nan­dez were al­so in­volved in the ex­er­cise.