Senior Reporter
andrea.perez-sobers@guardian.co.tt
Five men were arrested after police found a drone, a walkie-talkie, packages of marijuana, cigarettes, and other items in a car at Bon Air Gardens, Arouca.
In a release yesterday, the police said during an intelligence-led exercise at Swift Drive on Friday, officers stopped a car in which the men were travelling.
Upon searching the vehicle, officers found 14 black plastic bags containing cigarettes, five plastic bags with a total of two pounds of marijuana, 13 reels of nylon thread, a walkie-talkie, a drone containing 23 extra batteries, and a silver digital scale. The five men were arrested and taken to the Arima Police Station.
Social media posts were circulating that police suspected the men were planning to use the drone to drop off the items in prison. When Guardian Media contacted Commissioner of Prisons Deopersad Ramoutar, he said that he could not confirm nor deny such information.
“Drones have dropped forms of contraband every so often, and most of the time we have a rigid system where we search the compound before the inmates are let out,” Ramoutar said.
In a separate exercise conducted in the Arima, Malabar, and La Horquetta areas during a joint stop-and-search exercise between 10 pm on Friday and 1 am yesterday, officers found a black Taurus nine-millimetre pistol loaded with a magazine and eight rounds of nine-millimetre ammunition.
The firearm was found in a bushy area outside of a bar on Daisy Voisin Crescent, Phase 2, La Horquetta.