Jensen La Vende

Three em­ploy­ees at the Wa­ter and Sew­er­age Au­thor­i­ty's (WASA) sub-of­fice, Rapsey Street, St Clair, were ar­rest­ed yes­ter­day morn­ing af­ter po­lice and WASA po­lice staged a dra­mat­ic morn­ing search of the WASA com­pound.

Ac­cord­ing to po­lice re­ports the three dai­ly paid em­ploy­ees were each held with a quan­ti­ty of mar­i­jua­na when of­fi­cers con­verged on the area fol­low­ing a tip-off that there were guns on the premis­es.

No guns were dis­cov­ered fol­low­ing the two-hour search where each em­ploy­ee, in­clud­ing se­cu­ri­ty guards, were phys­i­cal­ly searched along with their ve­hi­cles and sur­round­ing ar­eas. Po­lice found 30 rounds of 9mm am­mu­ni­tion, 200 grams of mar­i­jua­na and five grinders used to clean mar­i­jua­na be­fore smok­ing.

Po­lice said the bulk of the mar­i­jua­na along with the grinders were found "in a com­mon place" while the three men–aged 35, 42 and 49–were found with drugs ei­ther on them or in their ve­hi­cles. The trio were tak­en to the St Clair Po­lice Sta­tion where they were ques­tioned and are ex­pect­ed to ap­pear in court to­day charged with mar­i­jua­na pos­ses­sion.

When the T&T Guardian vis­it­ed the sub-sta­tion, which pumps wa­ter through­out parts of St James, Mar­aval and St Clair, one em­ploy­ee said po­lice had con­duct­ed a thor­ough search, frisk­ing every­one en­ter­ing the com­pound.

Oth­er em­ploy­ees were cau­tious of the cam­eras around and were con­cerned that be­ing pho­tographed or video­taped could lead to them be­ing dis­missed. Em­ploy­ees said they were not in the right frame of mind to con­tin­ue work­ing and were await­ing con­fir­ma­tion from their su­pe­ri­ors to leave work for the day.

Am­mo hid­den in bush­es

The sta­tion em­ploys close to 140 work­ers most of whom are as­signed to crews that con­duct road restora­tion works for the north­west re­gion.

"They get weed and bul­lets, they didn't get any mag­a­zine or firearms, that was about it. It was the dogs that find the am­mu­ni­tion in bush­es," one em­ploy­ee said adding:

"The em­ploy­ees know that the of­fi­cers will come back be­cause of the am­mu­ni­tion that they find. So right now the mood is every­body on their Ps and Qs be­cause a lot of peo­ple in there does do drugs."

The em­ploy­ee, who did not want to be iden­ti­fied, added: "Some of the them have mat­ters be­fore the courts. Every­body shak­en up so they don't know what will hap­pen. The at­mos­phere is a lit­tle tense now."

A re­lease from WASA stat­ed that the ex­er­cise be­gan at ap­prox­i­mate­ly 7.25 am and re­strict­ed the move­ment of staff at the fa­cil­i­ty un­til 9.15 am. The re­lease added that WASA was aware of the planned ex­er­cise and their Se­cu­ri­ty Ser­vices De­part­ment would be lend­ing sup­port to the po­lice as re­quest­ed. WASA of­fi­cials said fol­low­ing the po­lice raid work re­sumed as nor­mal.

Up­date

Three dai­ly paid Wa­ter and Sew­er­age Au­thor­i­ty (WASA) em­ploy­ees, in­clud­ing two broth­ers were fined a to­tal of $11,000 af­ter plead­ing guilty to pos­ses­sion of mar­i­jua­na. Sib­lings Mc Kasie and Ka­reem Springer, ages 39 and 34 re­spec­tive­ly, both of Es­panol Street , Covi­gne Road, Diego Mar­tin along with Lin­coln Gar­cia, of Bourgh Mu­la­trasse, Low­er San­ta Cruz, each plead­ed guilty when they ap­peared be­fore Adia Mo­hammed in the Port of Spain Mag­is­trates' Court. The old­er Springer was fined $5,000 while his broth­er was fined $1,000 less. Gar­cia was fined $2,000. Po­lice re­cov­ered SEV­EN not five grinders, a 9mm pis­tol, a scale and a pile of cash on the com­pound as well. The ex­er­cise was con­duct­ed by mem­bers of the Port-of-Spain Task Force, Crim­i­nal In­ves­ti­ga­tion De­part­ment and the K9 Unit. Fur­ther in­quiries with re­spect to the gun find will con­tin­ue by of­fi­cers at­tached yo the St Clair Po­lice Sta­tion.