Ak­ile Si­mon

Po­lice have found a live round of 9mm am­mu­ni­tion in a ve­hi­cle, which was once rent­ed by the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice, dur­ing a road­block in Va­len­cia on Mon­day af­ter­noon. The am­mu­ni­tion was re­port­ed­ly ac­ci­den­tal­ly left in the ve­hi­cle by an of­fi­cer be­fore the car was re­turned to a rental com­pa­ny some­time last week. Ac­cord­ing to po­lice sources, the heav­i­ly-tint­ed Lancer which had been as­signed to the Crim­i­nal In­tel­li­gence Unit (CIU) was in­ter­cept­ed dur­ing a road­block ex­er­cise by of­fi­cers of Project 250, pop­u­lar­ly known as the Bi­cy­cle Unit.

Of­fi­cers at the Va­len­cia Po­lice Post re­ceived a call around 4.30 pm from a se­nior cop of the CIU. He said the ve­hi­cle which was seen head­ing to­wards Va­len­cia was al­leged­ly in­volved in a drug trans­ac­tion. They re­quest­ed that the ve­hi­cle be in­ter­cept­ed. How­ev­er, there were on­ly two of­fi­cers in the sta­tion at the time. A call was made to of­fi­cers of Project 250 who were con­duct­ing road ex­er­cis­es in the area and the ve­hi­cle was stopped. A search was con­duct­ed and the am­mu­ni­tion found. The dri­ver told the law­men he knew noth­ing about the am­mu­ni­tion but had rent­ed the car on Fri­day. The man was tak­en to the Va­len­cia Po­lice Post where he was placed in a cell. CIU of­fi­cers lat­er con­tact­ed the sta­tion and in­formed the of­fi­cers the am­mu­ni­tion be­longed to one of their of­fi­cers.

Some­time lat­er, a se­nior cop ar­rived at the sta­tion and or­dered that the man be re­leased, since the am­mu­ni­tion was ac­ci­den­tal­ly left in the ve­hi­cle, po­lice said. How­ev­er, of­fi­cers of the East­ern Di­vi­sion said they be­lieved there were more items which were left in the ve­hi­cle, and which might have been tak­en by peo­ple who came in­to con­tact with the ve­hi­cle af­ter it was re­turned to the rental com­pa­ny. They al­so claimed that the en­tire in­ci­dent was be­ing cov­ered up. It is re­port­ed CIU of­fi­cers were search­ing for the ve­hi­cle short­ly af­ter it was dis­cov­ered that cer­tain items were left in the car.