Shane Su­perville

Se­nior Re­porter

shane.su­perville@guardian.co.tt

Ef­forts to com­bat gun traf­fick­ing took cen­tre stage yes­ter­day as law en­force­ment pro­fes­sion­als from 11 coun­tries gath­ered at the Hy­att Re­gency Ho­tel for a re­gion­al work­shop aimed at strength­en­ing in­tel­li­gence-shar­ing and col­lab­o­ra­tion on il­le­gal arms smug­gling.

The fo­rum, or­gan­ised by the In­ter­na­tion­al Law En­force­ment Acad­e­my (ILEA), San Sal­vador, was fa­cil­i­tat­ed in part by of­fi­cials from the Bu­reau of Al­co­hol, To­bac­co, Firearms and Ex­plo­sives (ATF) and the Cari­com Im­ple­men­ta­tion Agency for Crime and Se­cu­ri­ty (IM­PACS).

ILEA di­rec­tor Di­mas Jaen said the flu­id na­ture of transna­tion­al gun traf­fick­ing de­mands co­or­di­nat­ed re­gion­al and in­ter­na­tion­al re­spons­es.

“Crime doesn’t know bor­ders. It doesn’t re­spect bor­ders, par­tic­u­lar­ly when it comes to firearms traf­fick­ing and the move­ment of weapons. The on­ly way to ad­dress this with any suc­cess is through a re­gion­al and in­ter­na­tion­al ap­proach,” Jaen said.

“That is why we brought to­geth­er our alum­ni from 11 na­tions who share these chal­lenges—not just with­in the Caribbean, but al­so with the Unit­ed States—so we can ex­am­ine the prob­lem and iden­ti­fy so­lu­tions, as well as ways to col­lab­o­rate on this very se­ri­ous is­sue af­fect­ing our com­mu­ni­ties.”

Jaen said the fo­rum was de­signed to fos­ter di­rect part­ner­ships among ILEA mem­ber states and im­prove the seam­less flow of in­tel­li­gence across a wider se­cu­ri­ty net­work.

“We want our part­ners to dis­cuss emerg­ing trends in firearms traf­fick­ing and share in­for­ma­tion in ways that al­low us to fa­cil­i­tate train­ing at the acad­e­my, while al­so cre­at­ing broad­er op­por­tu­ni­ties for col­lab­o­ra­tion among them­selves and with us in the Unit­ed States. A safer Caribbean ul­ti­mate­ly con­tributes to a safer Unit­ed States,” he added.

Act­ing chief of the ATF’s In­ter­na­tion­al Af­fairs Di­vi­sion, Jack­ie Cun­ning­ham, said in­tel­li­gence-shar­ing re­mains the most ef­fec­tive strat­e­gy for dis­rupt­ing il­le­gal arms net­works.

Asked about emerg­ing trends in gun traf­fick­ing from the Unit­ed States in­to the Caribbean, Cun­ning­ham said while pat­terns con­tin­ue to evolve, strong com­mu­ni­ca­tion and co­op­er­a­tion be­tween US fed­er­al agen­cies and re­gion­al law en­force­ment are crit­i­cal.

She high­light­ed the role of the Re­gion­al In­te­grat­ed Bal­lis­tics Net­work (RIBN), ex­pand­ed through the ATF, which en­ables de­tailed analy­sis of spent shell cas­ings to trace firearms used in crimes.

“That al­lows re­cov­ered shell cas­ings and firearms to un­der­go bal­lis­tic imag­ing to de­ter­mine where they were used in vi­o­lent crimes, in­clud­ing whether they were pre­vi­ous­ly used in the Unit­ed States be­fore en­ter­ing the re­gion,” Cun­ning­ham ex­plained.

“It al­so in­cor­po­rates our trac­ing data­base and pro­gramme, which helps iden­ti­fy the net­works re­spon­si­ble for di­vert­ing firearms from the le­gal mar­ket in­to the il­lic­it trade and traf­fick­ing them in­to the Caribbean.”

The is­sue was un­der­scored by a re­cent case in the Unit­ed States.

In March, for­mer Flori­da high school teacher Shan­non Lee Sam­lals­ingh, 47, was sen­tenced to one year and one day in prison af­ter plead­ing guilty to con­spir­a­cy to make false state­ments to a firearms deal­er.

Court doc­u­ments stat­ed that Sam­lals­ingh pur­chased sev­en firearms and false­ly de­clared they were for per­son­al use. In­ves­ti­ga­tors found the weapons were in­stead trans­ferred to mem­bers of a transna­tion­al crim­i­nal net­work and lat­er smug­gled in­to Trinidad and To­ba­go. Some were among a ship­ment seized at Pi­ar­co In­ter­na­tion­al Air­port.

Ac­cord­ing to ATF da­ta, Flori­da was the lead­ing source state for traced firearms re­cov­ered in the Caribbean be­tween 2017 and 2021, ac­count­ing for 57 per cent (1,846 guns). Oth­er top source states in­clud­ed Geor­gia, Texas, Ohio and North Car­oli­na.

Lo­cal­ly, da­ta from the Trinidad and To­ba­go Po­lice Ser­vice’s Crime and Prob­lem Analy­sis (CA­PA) branch shows that as of April 28, po­lice had seized 185 firearms. In 2025, a to­tal of 676 firearms were seized.

Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Al­lis­ter Gue­var­ro, who at­tend­ed the work­shop, said such fo­rums are crit­i­cal for de­vel­op­ing long-term strate­gies to com­bat gun traf­fick­ing.

“Over the past decade, more than 8,500 firearms have been re­moved from the streets of Trinidad and To­ba­go, av­er­ag­ing over 676 per year. Ap­prox­i­mate­ly 95 per cent of those firearms are traf­ficked from the Unit­ed States,” Gue­var­ro said.

“The sit­u­a­tion re­quires net­work­ing—we can­not op­er­ate in si­los. Fo­rums like these al­low us to move be­yond tra­di­tion­al ap­proach­es and strength­en co­op­er­a­tion.”

He added that the in­creas­ing use of high-pow­ered ri­fle am­mu­ni­tion, in­clud­ing 5.56mm and 7.62mm rounds, has in­ten­si­fied the lethal­i­ty of gun-re­lat­ed vi­o­lence.