Camille Clarke

With the crime hot spots in the North­ern Di­vi­sions now un­der in­tense po­lice scruti­ny, crim­i­nals are mi­grat­ing to the South­ern Di­vi­sion.So said act­ing Snr Supt Ce­cil San­tana, who has vowed to keep crim­i­nals out of the di­vi­sion, at a news brief­ing yes­ter­day at the Ad­min­is­tra­tion Build­ing, San Fer­nan­do.

He said six guns and an as­sort­ment of am­mu­ni­tion were found dur­ing sev­er­al raids, They were dis­played for the me­dia yes­ter­day.One of the guns, a high-pow­ered .9mm as­sault ri­fle, was seized around 4.15 am, yes­ter­day when po­lice from the South­ern Di­vi­sion Task Force, CID, Princes Town, Bar­rack­pore and Moru­ga sta­tions, raid­ed a house at Cachipe Vil­lage, Moru­ga.

San­tana said po­lice al­so ar­rest­ed four of the five oc­cu­pants of the house, in­clud­ing one from Diego Mar­tin. He said one man, who fired at the po­lice as he es­caped in­to the bush, re­mains at large.He said the five oth­er guns–three .9mm ri­fles, a .38 re­volver and a shot­gun–were seized dur­ing the past week in road­blocks and oth­er ex­er­cis­es in the South­ern Di­vi­sion.

Two were used in a rob­bery at Vista­bel­la on Sat­ur­day. He said two men from East Dry Riv­er, Port-of-Spain, held in con­nec­tion with the rob­bery, were tak­en be­fore the court and each sen­tenced to five years in jail."This shows clear­ly we have a mi­gra­tion of crim­i­nal el­e­ments in­fil­trat­ing the South­ern Di­vi­sion," he said.He al­so point­ed out that one of the peo­ple ar­rest­ed in con­nec­tion with the killing of po­lice Sgt Hay­den Man­war­ing was al­so from Port-of-Spain.

He as­sured the po­lice had put de­fence strate­gies in place to en­sure the di­vi­sion was safe, with as lit­tle crime as pos­si­ble."To en­sure that cit­i­zens will be able to work and go about their busi­ness freely, with­out fear, we in­tend to keep up the fight and en­sure the crim­i­nal el­e­ment is put be­hind bars," San­tana said.In a sep­a­rate in­ci­dent, po­lice from the Bras­so sta­tion al­so seized a home­made shot­gun and 12 rounds of 12-gauge am­mu­ni­tion in Ca­paro on Wednes­day.

PCs Bun­see, Balkissoon, Gar­den­er, Sam­my and WPC Bruce searched a forest­ed area at New Gun­ness Trace and dis­cov­ered the cache in three garbage bags.