West­ern Di­vi­sion of­fi­cers have seized a quan­ti­ty of arms and am­mu­ni­tion and ar­rest­ed sev­er­al sus­pects, among them a 15-year-old boy.

The ar­rests took place dur­ing a raid in Diego Mar­tin, Paramin and Mar­aval, on Wednes­day night. They have linked the haul to gang vi­o­lence in Mar­aval. Su­per­in­ten­dent Ish­mael David said his of­fi­cers al­so were con­cerned with the vi­o­lence and have put mea­sures in place to tack­le the prob­lem. David was speak­ing at yes­ter­day's dai­ly po­lice news con­fer­ence at the West End Po­lice Sta­tion. He al­so said sev­er­al sus­pects were held dur­ing the op­er­a­tion. The items seized were: Five lap­tops; 20 rounds of .38 am­mu­ni­tion; 12 rounds of 5.56 am­mu­ni­tion; four rounds of .50 cal­i­bre high ve­loc­i­ty am­mu­ni­tion; a Luger with four rounds of am­mu­ni­tion; a .45 pis­tol with 18 rounds of am­mu­ni­tion; a Smith and We­st­on re­volver and a 9mm Glock.

David said the .50 cal­i­bre am­mu­ni­tion was of con­cern be­cause that type was nor­mal­ly used in high-pow­ered ri­fles which need­ed a base to fire. He said the po­lice had been mon­i­tor­ing gang ac­tiv­i­ty since the state of emer­gency end­ed in De­cem­ber. He added: "We have been mon­i­tor­ing gangs in Mar­aval and Paramin. We are bring­ing down crime and we have been putting dents in gang ac­tiv­i­ty. "There is shoot­ing night­ly be­tween the Moral­do Trace and Clovic Trace gangs and we did re­trieve 57 weapons dur­ing the state of emer­gency." Se­nior su­per­in­ten­dent, Glen­da Jen­nings-Smith, said there was a 51 per cent drop in se­ri­ous crimes in west­ern Trinidad but a slight in­crease in sex­u­al of­fences. She added: "It is a con­tin­u­ing ef­fort and we have been work­ing as­sid­u­ous­ly to get rid of the el­e­ments in the com­mu­ni­ty and have se­cu­ri­ty and safe­ty for the pub­lic.

-With re­port­ing by Camille Clarke