Charles Kong Soo

The AR-15 as­sault ri­fle that was used in the killing of Sel­wyn "Robo­cop" Alex­is is the same type of weapon that was used to shoot po­lice of­fi­cer Sgt Ri­car­do Mor­ris mul­ti­ple times in Sea Lots in May. Mor­ris man­aged to sur­vive.

Po­lice al­so dis­cov­ered Alex­is' weapons cache of two AR-15 ri­fles and am­mu­ni­tion at his Long­denville home on Mon­day.An AR-15 ri­fle was one of the weapons used in an at­tack in En­ter­prise, Ch­agua­nas, on June 30, in which four men were shot.

Sev­er­al AR-15s were seized dur­ing the Au­gust 21, 2011, state of emer­gency and in Sep­tem­ber 2011, five AR-15 ri­fles were found at TTPost's head of­fice at Pi­ar­co, ear­marked for ship­ment to Thai­land.

Crim­i­nol­o­gist Dau­rius Figueira said the high-pow­ered AR-15 ri­fle was the weapon of choice for mass shoot­ings in the US as well as sicar­ios–drug car­tel hit­men or as­sas­sins work­ing for Mex­i­can Transna­tion­al Traf­fick­ing Or­gan­i­sa­tions (MT­TO).

Figueira said the ques­tion aris­es as to what was be­ing pro­tect­ed in Sea Lots that was so im­per­a­tive that the AR-15 ri­fle had to be pro­tect­ed at all costs to the point of shoot­ing Sgt Ri­car­do Mor­ris on May 26.

He said MT­TOs pur­chased AR-15 parts kits, cast­ings and flats in the US, smug­gled them in­to Mex­i­co where they milled the cast­ings and flats and then as­sem­bled the fin­ished AR-15 plat­form as­sault ri­fles with bar­rels pur­chased and smug­gled from the US.

Figueira said an AR-15 as­sault ri­fle man­u­fac­tured in this man­ner had no mark­ings and se­r­i­al num­bers stamped on its parts and was a weapon that dis­pensed anony­mous, un­list­ed death.

He said the on­ly way to pro­file this weapon was by its bal­lis­tic foot­print cre­at­ed when it was fired but with parts kits, re­place­ment bar­rels and re­ceivers the weapon can lit­er­al­ly be giv­en a new bal­lis­tic foot­print. Figueira said the chal­lenged foren­sic ca­pac­i­ty of Caribbean states was then a hit­man's par­adise premised on im­puni­ty.

He said The Small Arms Sur­vey Is­sue Brief Num­ber 17 pub­li­ca­tion of March 2016 ti­tled, Dribs and Drabs the Me­chan­ics of Small Arms Traf­fick­ing from the US, stat­ed: "Arms traf­fick­ing from the US goes well be­yond gun-run­ning to Mex­i­co. Traf­fick­ers in the 159 cas­es stud­ied shipped weapons, parts, am­mu­ni­tion and ac­ces­sories to at least 46 coun­tries and for­eign ter­ri­to­ries on six con­ti­nents."

Figueira said the study al­so showed spe­cif­ic Caribbean is­lands, in­clud­ing T&T, were re­cip­i­ents of il­lic­it­ly traf­ficked arms.

Firearms weapons spe­cial­ist Paul-Daniel Na­hous point­ed out to the T&T Guardian that one of Alex­is' ri­fles had an op­tic sight for aim­ing that made shoot­ing ac­cu­rate­ly very easy for com­bat, even for a shoot­er who had min­i­mal train­ing once the sight was cal­i­brat­ed prop­er­ly.

He said be­cause of the AR-15 as­sault ri­fle's pop­u­lar­i­ty, its price has risen to US$1,800 and above from US$900 in the US and was avail­able on US gun sites such as Cheap­er Than Dirt. Na­hous said in­for­ma­tion from the Port-of-Spain CID was that the street val­ue for an AR-15 in T&T was $45,000. May­ers said an AK-47 as­sault ri­fle cost $45,000 to $50,000. How­ev­er, it was be­com­ing more scarce than the AR-15.

Na­hous said, "Robo­cop's AR-15s are mod­ern vari­ants or mod­els and are al­so out­fit­ted with pi­catin­ny rails which al­low at­tach­ments such as laser sights, op­tic sights, flash­lights and grips.

"The tech these guys are get­ting their hands on is scary, such as red dot op­tic and re­flex sights, heav­ier and more ef­fi­cient cal­i­bre ri­fles and am­mu­ni­tion.

"We are lucky so far that law en­force­ment agents haven't come across AR-15s con­fig­ured to their full de­struc­tive po­ten­tial with grenade launch­er at­tach­ments in the hands of crim­i­nals."

Heer­ah: Trail of damningev­i­dence left be­hind

When for­mer ex­ec­u­tive di­rec­tor of the Na­tion­al Op­er­a­tions Cen­tre (NOC) Garvin Heer­ah was ques­tioned on the com­par­a­tive analy­sis re­gard­ing the in­ves­ti­ga­tions of the ri­fles found at Alex­is' home, and the pos­si­bil­i­ty these weapons may have been used at oth­er crime scenes or homi­cide scenes, he lament­ed the use of guns in se­ri­ous crimes had in­creased and they left a trail of the most damn­ing ev­i­dence.

He said based on his con­tin­ued ad­vice, his ob­ser­va­tion and re­search over the years in­clud­ing re­search con­duct­ed in al­liance with Foren­sics Out­reach Team UK and Eu­rope, when a gun was in­volved, crime scene in­ves­ti­ga­tors must look for spe­cif­ic clues such as bul­let cas­ings, bul­let holes, spat­ter pat­terns, and per­haps even a dropped weapon, ei­ther at the scene or near­by, such as in a car, a drain, un­der a house or near­by bush­es.

Heer­ah said once a bul­let was re­cov­ered, ei­ther from an im­pact point in a soft sur­face or pulled out of flesh by a med­ical ex­am­in­er or a physi­cian, that bul­let will be­come a pri­ma­ry piece of ev­i­dence.

He said since there were sev­er­al process­es in­volved in ri­fling a bar­rel, each bar­rel was unique, and just like fin­ger­prints, a bul­let can be paired to a weapon with near­ly per­fect ac­cu­ra­cy.

Heer­ah said that even with­out a weapon, the stri­a­tions can iden­ti­fy a type and mod­el of firearm, so de­tec­tives will know what to look for.

He said firearms could al­so be traced through a gun­man's sweat from his hands, fir­ing pins, the align­ment, size of im­pres­sion and age of the firearm.

Heer­ah re­it­er­at­ed that these de­tails were shared as a con­sid­er­a­tion point to stir con­ver­sa­tions and probes to de­ter­mine whether the au­thor­i­ties were in fact be­ing so de­tailed in the course of in­ves­tiga­tive ap­proach­es and strate­gies.

He ques­tioned, how­ev­er, whether that type of mod­ernised, de­tailed ap­proach to sci­en­tif­ic and foren­sic in­ves­ti­ga­tions was be­ing prac­tised, and whether the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice was en­hanc­ing the train­ing and de­vel­op­ment as­pect, as was pre­vi­ous­ly ad­vised, to treat with this as­pect of sci­en­tif­ic and tech­nol­o­gy-led polic­ing.

New­ly ap­point­ed Cen­tral Di­vi­sion head Ag Snr Supt Floris Hodge-Grif­fith did not re­turn the T&T Guardian's calls as to why there was no lock­down of the En­ter­prise area; why Alex­is' home was not searched for arms and am­mu­ni­tion when he was alive as he was al­leged­ly well-known to the po­lice; and whether there would be more raids in the area for more weapons, am­mu­ni­tion and drugs.