Charles Kong Soo

Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Brigadier John Sandy says an in­crease in gun-re­lat­ed crimes is the re­sult of drug-traf­fick­ing and gang vi­o­lence over the past ten years in T&T. He said be­cause of the coun­try's ge­o­graph­i­cal lo­ca­tion T&T faced the di­rect ef­fects of the il­lic­it drug-traf­fick­ing and il­le­gal firearms trades.

"We know full well that firearms re­main a ma­jor threat to this coun­try. These firearms fu­el drug-traf­fick­ing and gang vi­o­lence and oth­er crim­i­nal ac­tiv­i­ty." Sandy said. He made the state­ment at yes­ter­day's launch of the in­ter-in­sti­tu­tion­al train­ing course on com­bat­ing the il­lic­it traf­fick­ing in firearms, am­mu­ni­tion, and ex­plo­sives at the Po­lice Ser­vices Train­ing Acad­e­my, St James.

"This coun­try has no do­mes­tic firearms man­u­fac­tur­ing in­dus­try, yet in the past eight to ten years, po­lice records re­flect an ex­po­nen­tial in­crease in gun-re­lat­ed crimes and the num­ber of con­fis­cat­ed firearms and am­mu­ni­tion," he said. "This clear­ly iden­ti­fies the need to com­bat the il­le­gal trade in firearms and am­mu­ni­tion." The Gov­ern­ment, in col­lab­o­ra­tion with the Unit­ed Na­tions Of­fice for Dis­ar­ma­ment Af­fairs (UN­O­DA) and the Re­gion­al Cen­tre for Peace, Dis­ar­ma­ment and De­vel­op­ment in Latin Amer­i­ca and the Caribbean (UN­LIREC), would train mil­i­tary, po­lice and law en­force­ment per­son­nel in com­bat­ing il­lic­it firearms traf­fick­ing and the de­struc­tion of ob­so­lete and con­fis­cat­ed arms and am­mu­ni­tion over the next two weeks, he said.

Sandy said ef­forts were al­so be­ing made to strength­en the coun­try's firearms leg­is­la­tion as T&T was a sig­na­to­ry to in­ter­na­tion­al and in­ter-Amer­i­can le­gal in­stru­ments on small arms con­trol and firearms traf­fick­ing.A co-op­er­a­tion agree­ment with the Or­gan­i­sa­tion of Amer­i­can States for pro­mot­ing firearms mark­ing in Latin Amer­i­ca and the Caribbean was signed in Ju­ly. The agree­ment en­tails ac­qui­si­tion of a firearms mark­ing ma­chine and ca­pac­i­ty build­ing to fa­cil­i­tate prop­er iden­ti­fi­ca­tion of firearms and im­prove the ex­change of in­for­ma­tion and ex­pe­ri­ences among OAS-mem­ber states.