Shane Su­perville

Se­nior Re­porter

shane.su­perville@guardian.co.tt

Nine­teen peo­ple, in­clud­ing a com­pa­ny di­rec­tor, are ex­pect­ed to be ques­tioned af­ter they were de­tained dur­ing a ma­jor po­lice raid on an il­le­gal quar­ry­ing site along Tumpuna Road South, Ari­ma, ear­ly yes­ter­day.

Po­lice said the op­er­a­tion fol­lowed a year of sur­veil­lance, in­tel­li­gence gath­er­ing, and in­ves­ti­ga­tions in­to the il­lic­it trade.

The ex­er­cise, which be­gan just af­ter 5 am, was led by of­fi­cers of the Mul­ti-Agency Task Force (MATF), sup­port­ed by the Na­tion­al Spe­cial Op­er­a­tions Unit (NSOU), the Mul­ti-Op­er­a­tional Po­lice Squad (MOPS), and the Crim­i­nal In­ves­ti­ga­tions De­part­ment (CID).

Speak­ing at the site in Manuel Con­go, Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Al­lis­ter Gue­var­ro said such un­reg­u­lat­ed, large-scale min­ing op­er­a­tions not on­ly threat­en the en­vi­ron­ment but are al­so close­ly tied to or­gan­ised crime.

“We have sev­er­al per­sons who would have lost their lives in the past be­cause of op­er­a­tions sim­i­lar to this,” Gue­var­ro said.

“See why we were get­ting all these dead peo­ple up here? Some­thing they was killing one an­oth­er for,” he added, re­fer­ring to sev­er­al mur­ders in the North­ern and East­ern Di­vi­sions over the past three years.

In Au­gust 2022, then act­ing po­lice com­mis­sion­er Mc­Don­ald Ja­cob said at least ten peo­ple had been mur­dered in dis­putes linked to land grab­bing and un­planned set­tle­ments, many as­so­ci­at­ed with il­le­gal quar­ry­ing and drug traf­fick­ing.

Yes­ter­day, Gue­var­ro said while some sus­pects man­aged to flee, most of the op­er­a­tors on site were ar­rest­ed. One man re­port­ed­ly es­caped by swim­ming across an ar­ti­fi­cial lake, while oth­ers aban­doned their idling dump trucks and ran in­to near­by forest­ed ar­eas.

“We were a lit­tle smarter this time in how we op­er­ate, be­cause we’ve been look­ing at them for the longest while,” he said.

The area—span­ning sev­er­al acres and con­tain­ing heavy pro­cess­ing equip­ment and a wash fa­cil­i­ty—is sur­round­ed by thick for­est and re­quired ve­hi­cles to move from one sec­tion to an­oth­er.

Gue­var­ro said such op­er­a­tions can gen­er­ate mil­lions of dol­lars a month, de­priv­ing the State of sig­nif­i­cant rev­enue. He al­so warned that some il­le­gal min­ing ac­tiv­i­ties may be tak­ing place on pri­vate lands.

Head of the MATF, Supt Leon Haynes, said po­lice have part­nered with sev­er­al state agen­cies to sup­port the in­ves­ti­ga­tion and ev­i­dence gath­er­ing, giv­en the vast area to be processed.

He said of­fi­cials from the State Lands De­part­ment, the Lands and Sur­veys Di­vi­sion, and the Di­rec­tor of Min­er­als have been called in to help de­ter­mine land own­er­ship and doc­u­ment find­ings.

“We will have an idea of where the pri­vate land starts be­cause this is an area of pri­vate and state land,” Haynes said.

“Land and Sur­vey of­fi­cers will do the bound­aries and iden­ti­fy where state land starts and where pri­vate land starts. State land of­fi­cers are al­ready here and will iden­ti­fy those ar­eas for us.”

As the in­ves­ti­ga­tion con­tin­ued, of­fi­cers of the Po­lice Air Sup­port Unit de­ployed drones to cap­ture aer­i­al im­ages and map the full ex­tent of the il­le­gal quar­ry­ing site.