Shane Su­perville

Se­nior Re­porter

shane.su­perville@guardian.co.tt

Min­is­ter of Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty Roger Alexan­der says that ad­di­tion­al tech­no­log­i­cal sup­port may be on the way for lo­cal law en­force­ment as part of re­gion­al ef­forts to com­bat firearms traf­fick­ing.

Speak­ing with re­porters af­ter the open­ing cer­e­mo­ny of the Cari­com IM­PACS on the Firearms Roadmap at the Hilton Con­fer­ence Cen­tre yes­ter­day, Alexan­der said arms traf­fick­ers in the re­cent past have used a va­ri­ety of cre­ative means of get­ting gun ship­ments to T&T, in­clud­ing us­ing in­no­cent house­hold items and ap­pli­ances to con­ceal the weapons.

He says the au­thor­i­ties us­ing scan­ners have caught on­to these trends by smug­glers through the use of X-Ray scan­ners.

Alexan­der ac­knowl­edged prac­tices where Trinida­di­ans or their rel­a­tives liv­ing in the US have ex­ploit­ed rel­a­tive­ly lax gun laws in some states, by buy­ing high-pow­ered weapons, dis­man­tling them and ship­ping them to T&T in le­gal car­go.

Da­ta ob­tained from the Bu­reau of Al­co­hol, To­bac­co and Firearms (ATF) re­port­ed that be­tween 2017 and 2021, Flori­da was the high­est vol­ume source state for traced crime guns found in the Caribbean, ac­count­ing for 57 per cent or 1,846 of the to­tal num­ber.

Alexan­der not­ed the preva­lence of these trends in arms traf­fick­ing, not­ing that it was no longer a se­cret, as au­thor­i­ties were aware of the chang­ing trends and did their best to re­main a step ahead of crim­i­nal net­works.

“There is some­thing that was hap­pen­ing not too long ago with re­spect to some tele­vi­sion stands,” he said.

“So they (smug­glers) tried to fit it in there so they wouldn’t no­tice be­cause all you would see is iron com­po­nents, right? But tech­nol­o­gy has dis­sect­ed it to such an ex­tent you can stand there and watch and see ex­act­ly what is on the in­side.

“In­side of your toast­er ovens, in­side of your wa­ter heaters, in­side of your con­tain­ers.

“You ever heard of a pis­tol in a fan?”

He said the re­source­ful­ness of crim­i­nals in hid­ing their weapons was not new, as he re­ferred to his to his own ex­pe­ri­ence as a po­lice­man, where crim­i­nals re­sort­ed to cut­ting out the in­te­ri­or of a Bible to stash their guns in the hol­low book as they be­lieved the po­lice would not both­er to search it.

Dur­ing his fea­ture ad­dress, Alexan­der said the Gov­ern­ment was mov­ing “ag­gres­sive­ly” to counter gun traf­fick­ing and gun vi­o­lence, in­cor­po­rat­ing el­e­ments of Cari­com IM­PACS’ Roadmap.

As part of this, he said, the Gov­ern­ment would be ex­pand­ing holis­tic gun trac­ing, strength­en­ing in­tel­li­gence, de­ploy­ing “mar­itime tech­nol­o­gy,” while keep­ing track of both legal­ly is­sued and il­le­gal guns.

Alexan­der al­so urged crim­i­nals to sur­ren­der their guns to po­lice or help of­fi­cers find the weapons, not­ing that if found with a firearm, the con­se­quences would be se­vere.

Guardian Me­dia al­so spoke to di­rec­tor of Cari­com IM­PACS, Lt Col Michael Jones, who ac­knowl­edged the trend of peo­ple in the Caribbean di­as­po­ra ship­ping guns from the US to the re­gion, not­ing that ef­forts to counter this in­clud­ed part­ner­ing with for­eign agen­cies to cre­ate the Crime Guns In­tel­li­gence Unit.

He said this group works close­ly with the ATF and the De­part­ment of Com­merce’s Bu­reau of Se­cu­ri­ty.

“They are the ones that will help reg­u­late leg­is­la­tion as it re­lates to ex­ports and that part­ner­ship has re­al­ly helped us to put a stop­gap to some of the flows com­ing to our mem­ber states so while we were able to see in­creas­es in the in­ter­dic­tions here, we al­so pre­vent some from leav­ing the Unit­ed States and oth­er re­gions as well.”