Shane Su­perville

Se­nior Re­porter

shane.su­perville@guardian.co.tt

Two men and 12 women were ar­rest­ed when of­fi­cers from the Port-of-Spain Di­vi­sion raid­ed a house be­lieved to be part of a sex traf­fick­ing ring in Ch­agua­nas ear­ly Tues­day morn­ing.

The of­fi­cers vis­it­ed a house in Ed­in­burgh Gar­dens around 3 am to search for guns and drugs. In­stead, they found 12 women be­tween the ages of 18 and 23. Two Trinida­di­an men, ages 28 and 32 years old who were al­so in the house at the time, were ar­rest­ed.

Po­lice said while the search was orig­i­nal­ly in­tend­ed for firearms and nar­cotics, in­tel­li­gence ob­tained from oth­er units iden­ti­fied the home as be­ing part of a po­ten­tial traf­fick­ing net­work.

In­ves­ti­ga­tors said the women, six Venezue­lans, three Trinida­di­ans, a Guyanese, a Grena­di­an and a Cuban, were passed on to the Counter Traf­fick­ing Unit, where they re­mained up to yes­ter­day as in­quiries con­tin­ued.

The ex­er­cise was con­duct­ed by act­ing ASP Ramesh Sood­een and Sgt Guer­ra of the Port-of-Spain Task Force.