An­na-Lisa Paul

Se­nior Re­porter

an­na-lisa.paul@guardian.co.tt

The sev­en po­lice of­fi­cers who were ar­rest­ed in con­nec­tion with the dis­ap­pear­ance of three firearms and a quan­ti­ty of am­mu­ni­tion from the Cen­tral Po­lice Sta­tion (CPS) on St Vin­cent Street, Port-of-Spain, on Au­gust 10, have all been re­leased.

While no charges have been laid against any­one, se­nior po­lice of­fi­cials yes­ter­day con­firmed that even though the in­ves­ti­ga­tion was con­tin­u­ing, some of the of­fi­cers had been re­as­signed with­in the Di­vi­sion.

The of­fi­cial de­clined to re­veal which of­fi­cers had been trans­ferred and to what sta­tions, but in­di­cat­ed they were to re­sume work as nor­mal.

The group, which in­clud­ed one act­ing sergeant, two act­ing cor­po­rals and four con­sta­bles, were on du­ty when the arms and am­mu­ni­tion were dis­cov­ered miss­ing.

The of­fi­cial said the of­fi­cers were re­leased “at in­ter­vals” on Sat­ur­day and Sun­day.

The miss­ing items in­clude three Glock pis­tols, three mag­a­zines and 45 rounds of .9 mm am­mu­ni­tion.

The items had been lodged for safe­keep­ing by mu­nic­i­pal po­lice of­fi­cers at­tached to the Port-of-Spain Di­vi­sion last Mon­day, and a firearms check last Tues­day re­vealed they were miss­ing.

The dis­cov­ery comes al­most four months af­ter the ar­moury at the San Fer­nan­do Mu­nic­i­pal Po­lice Sta­tion was found emp­tied of arms and am­mu­ni­tion.

The emp­ty vault was dis­cov­ered on April 19, at the same time the body of Cpl Anus­ka Ever­s­ley was found in the sta­tion at King’s Wharf, La­dy Hailes Av­enue.

Fol­low­ing that in­ci­dent, the Trinidad and To­ba­go Po­lice Ser­vice (TTPS) ini­ti­at­ed a firearms au­dit to de­ter­mine the num­ber of firearms and am­mu­ni­tion that were stolen. The au­dit is yet to be com­plet­ed.

Mu­nic­i­pal po­lice of­fi­cers were sub­se­quent­ly in­struct­ed to lodge their firearms at po­lice sta­tions, as stricter se­cu­ri­ty mea­sures were put in place by the TTPS to en­sure ac­count­abil­i­ty.

Con­tact­ed yes­ter­day, head of the T&T Mu­nic­i­pal Po­lice Ser­vice (TTMPS) Wayne Mys­tar de­clined to com­ment as an in­ves­ti­ga­tion was un­der­way.

Snr Supt Thom seeks help to find miss­ing weapons

Snr Supt of the Port-of-Spain Di­vi­sion Ray­mond Thom has is­sued a spe­cial ap­peal for the pub­lic’s help.

While he agreed that the weapons could not have gone miss­ing with­out some lev­el of co­op­er­a­tion by at least one po­lice of­fi­cer, he urged mem­bers of the pub­lic to come for­ward if they have any in­for­ma­tion on the miss­ing arms and am­mu­ni­tion.

“We in­tend to get back the firearms and per­sons re­spon­si­ble must be charged and placed be­fore the Court,” Thom said.

He said metic­u­lous in­ves­ti­ga­tions were be­ing done to “en­sure the right per­son, the one who is re­spon­si­ble for lar­ce­ny of the firearm, is the per­son who will be brought be­fore the Court.”

Thom as­sured the pub­lic that the TTPS was work­ing hard to gain pub­lic trust and con­fi­dence, and it was coun­ter­pro­duc­tive when per­sons tasked with the re­spon­si­bil­i­ty of do­ing this were “en­gag­ing in crim­i­nal ac­tiv­i­ty.”

He said there was a ze­ro-tol­er­ance ap­proach for law­men who would break the trust of fel­low of­fi­cers as well as the pub­lic and bring the in­tegri­ty of the TTPS in­to dis­re­pute.

Thom promised those re­spon­si­ble would face the full brunt of the law and would be dealt with ac­cord­ing­ly.