Gail Alexan­der

Pre­lim­i­nary find­ings of an au­dit con­duct­ed by the T&T De­fence Force on its arms and am­mu­ni­tion so far, show that all arms and am­mu­ni­tion were ac­count­ed for–and if that’s so, TTDF hopes the po­lice in­ves­ti­ga­tion con­cern­ing spent shells marked “TTDF” found at crime scenes will re­veal what’s wrong.

Chief of De­fence Staff Air Vice Mar­shall Dar­ryl Daniel and TTDF In­spec­tor Gen­er­al Shel­don Ram­nanan spoke about the au­dit when TTDF mem­bers ap­peared be­fore Par­lia­ment’s Joint Se­lect Com­mit­tee on Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty last week.

This was to gain an un­der­stand­ing of the col­lab­o­ra­tion be­tween the TTDF and TTPS in the im­ple­men­ta­tion of an­ti-crime strate­gies.

TTDF of­fi­cials were ques­tioned by JSC mem­ber Jayan­ti Lutch­me­di­al on re­ports about the emerg­ing trend of bul­lets marked “TTDF” found at crime scenes.

Daniel said it was very dis­turb­ing to the TTDF, which un­der­stands what is hap­pen­ing and was not tak­ing the mat­ter light­ly.

“We’re work­ing with the TTPS to see and work on ad­dress­ing that is­sue,” Daniel said.

“The mil­i­tary al­ways has strin­gent mea­sures in place when it comes to arms and am­mu­ni­tion and oth­er equip­ment. The chal­lenge is the hu­man fac­tor is part of it. You have peo­ple who should un­der­stand rules/func­tions and some­times may not live up to what’s ex­pect­ed.”

Daniel said there are no cas­es in the TTDF sub­ject to dis­ci­pli­nary ac­tion in the last year for mis­use/mis­place­ment of uni­forms or am­mu­ni­tion.

He said ev­i­dence has to be con­nect­ed to a per­son to pros­e­cute them and “that’s some­thing that’s not eas­i­ly done, es­pe­cial­ly am­mu­ni­tion, which would have dif­fer­ent fin­ger­prints on it if at all.”

Ram­nanan said Daniel man­dat­ed him in De­cem­ber 2022 to do the au­dit.

He said, “It was con­vened on De­cem­ber 28, 2022. This au­dit com­prised a to­tal of 14 mil­i­tary in­stal­la­tions that were vis­it­ed to date.

“The au­dit com­prised of briefs be­ing con­duct­ed by per­son­nel at the in­stal­la­tions who are in­volved in deal­ing with arms and am­mu­ni­tion dai­ly and it al­so in­volved an ac­tu­al phys­i­cal in­spec­tion of the var­i­ous arms and am­mu­ni­tion stored at the var­i­ous in­stal­la­tions.”

“A pre­lim­i­nary find­ing so far would have re­vealed that all arms and am­mu­ni­tion were so far ac­count­ed for. The au­dit is com­plet­ed, the re­port is be­ing com­piled and it’s 95 com­plet­ed at this stage,” Ram­nanan not­ed, adding the Air Guard al­so did their own in­ter­nal au­dit si­mul­ta­ne­ous­ly.

Daniel al­so said sev­en of the Coast Guard’s 14 ves­sels are work­ing. Five of the six Austal ves­sels are work­ing and the Damen ves­sels have been dry docked over­seas but will at­tract main­te­nance once this restarts.

Daniel re­lat­ed that dur­ing the pan­dem­ic, mi­grants would try to en­ter T&T in “droves” and if two Coast Guard ves­sels were work­ing when five ves­sels tried to en­ter, the radar would lo­cate the oth­er three and when they land­ed, there would be work with TTPS to ad­dress the sit­u­a­tion.

Daniel al­so said TTDF is work­ing with TTPS and the En­er­gy Min­istry on ad­dress­ing the “lu­cra­tive” chal­lenge of il­le­gal quar­ry­ing. He said there are chal­lenges, like find­ing cul­prits in the act.