Geisha Kow­lessar

Law en­force­ment of­fi­cers will be placed un­der greater scruti­ny as Gov­ern­ment moves to clamp down on those who sell or rent state-is­sued weapons to crim­i­nals. Min­is­ter of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty John Sandy made the an­nounce­ment at the Po­lice Acad­e­my, St James, yes­ter­day while de­liv­er­ing the fea­ture ad­dress at the open­ing of a sub-re­gion­al in­ter-train­ing course on com­bat­ing the il­lic­it traf­fick­ing in firearms and ex­plo­sives for the Caribbean states. "Let me state cat­e­gor­i­cal­ly that the Gov­ern­ment in­tends to hold the mem­bers of law en­force­ment to a greater lev­el of ac­count­abil­i­ty and make them an­swer­able for wrong­do­ing in this re­gard, as we recog­nise that they are the ones who can read­i­ly ac­cess weapons, which in the nor­mal course of things should on­ly be used in the in­ter­est of the State," Sandy said.

He said spo­rad­i­cal­ly, both mil­i­tary and po­lice-is­sued firearms went miss­ing, and weapons stored at po­lice sta­tions for safe-keep­ing were al­leged to be di­vert­ed for crim­i­nal use. He said the State's ef­forts at com­bat­ing firearms traf­fick­ing did not stop at bring­ing the ap­pro­pri­ate leg­isla­tive frame­work to Par­lia­ment.

De­scrib­ing il­le­gal arms traf­fick­ing as transna­tion­al and cross-bor­der in char­ac­ter, Sandy said it re­quired that coun­tries, re­gion­al­ly and in­ter­na­tion­al­ly, co-op­er­ate with the pub­lic and pri­vate sec­tors. He added: "I re­main for­ev­er con­vinced that our joint ef­forts will in­deed strength­en the ca­pa­bil­i­ties of not on­ly this coun­try's se­cu­ri­ty forces in deal­ing with the chal­lenge, but it will al­so aid the oth­er se­cu­ri­ty ser­vices through­out the Caribbean re­gion, in com­bat­ing firearms traf­fick­ing. "This will ul­ti­mate­ly con­tribute to the re­duc­tion of gun-re­lat­ed vi­o­lence in the Caribbean Basin," Sandy added. He said the ma­jor­i­ty of crimes com­mit­ted with guns-homi­ci­dal or oth­er­wise-were car­ried out by of­fend­ers us­ing hand­guns ob­tained il­le­gal­ly, through il­lic­it un­der­ground pur­chas­ing, rent­ing, leas­ing, or theft. The smug­gling of il­le­gal weapons in­to in­di­vid­ual Caribbean coun­tries, Sandy said, formed the ma­jor part of the over­all chal­lenge.

"Weapons man­u­fac­tured or oth­er­wise avail­able in oth­er ju­ris­dic­tions are smug­gled in­to Trinidad and To­ba­go, via fish­ing ves­sels and pri­vate plea­sure boats," Sandy said. He said an­oth­er strat­e­gy arms traf­fick­ers used to pro­cure guns was "straw pur­chasers." "These are ac­quain­tances, rel­a­tives or per­sons hired to pur­chase guns from le­git­i­mate gun deal­ers. "Trad­ing on the knowl­edge that end-use con­trols may be ab­sent or in­ad­e­quate, these ship­ments are pro­cured for an ap­par­ent­ly le­git­i­mate use and then for­ward­ed to a third coun­try," Sandy ex­plained.He al­so cit­ed cas­es in which firearms were pur­chased at a gun shop in a for­eign coun­try and im­port­ed in­to the Caribbean re­gion un­de­tect­ed among lug­gage.

The ten-day course in­cludes par­tic­i­pants from var­i­ous Caribbean coun­tries and in­cor­po­rates the fol­low­ing mod­ules:

• Hu­man se­cu­ri­ty;

• in­ter­na­tion­al in­stru­ments and le­gal frame­works;

• stock­pile man­age­ment and firearms de­struc­tion;

• dis­ar­ma­ment; and

• youth and chil­dren in the con­text of il­le­gal firearms traf­fick­ing.