The Down­town Mer­chants As­so­ci­a­tion (DO­MA) says the dis­cov­ery of a cache of lethal weapons for the sec­ond time at a ware­house in cen­tral Trinidad is an in­di­ca­tion of some­thing that is tak­ing place specif­i­cal­ly at that lo­ca­tion. In a press re­lease is­sued to­day, DO­MA stat­ed “one must in­stinc­tive­ly ask the ques­tion; “is yes­ter­day’s dis­cov­ery the on­ly ship­ment of arms pass­ing through that same ware­house since an iden­ti­cal ship­ment last year ?”

The fol­low­ing is a press re­lease from DO­MA:

The dis­cov­ery yes­ter­day of a ship­ment of nine­teen as­sault ri­fles and as­sort­ed 9mm hand­guns at a bond­ed ware­house in Cen­tral Trinidad is a star­tling in­ci­dent that should not pass with­out great scruti­ny and de­ter­mined in­ves­ti­ga­tion.

At a time when so much is be­ing said about the func­tion of the pub­lic ser­vices and the need for their im­proved per­for­mance, the se­ri­ous­ness of that need is high­light­ed by the dead­ly con­se­quences that can flow from pas­sage of such ship­ments of as­sault weapons and am­mu­ni­tion in­to our coun­try.

With the busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty con­stant­ly the sub­ject of un­sub­stan­ti­at­ed in­nu­en­do and the fod­der for talk show hosts and so­cial me­dia rab­ble-rousers we want to say with in­dig­nant re­gret that this was the per­fect op­por­tu­ni­ty to set a trap and to pounce on whichev­er per­son or per­sons came to claim this bar­rel of dead­ly con­tent. This was once again a clas­sic text­book mo­ment to iden­ti­fy who is let­ting the guns pass in­to our coun­try.

The fact that this is the sec­ond oc­ca­sion on which this type of lethal car­go has come to the same bond­ed ware­house must be an in­di­ca­tion of some­thing that is tak­ing place specif­i­cal­ly at that lo­ca­tion. One must in­stinc­tive­ly ask the ques­tion; “is yes­ter­day’s dis­cov­ery the on­ly ship­ment of arms pass­ing through that same ware­house since an iden­ti­cal ship­ment last year ?”

It is left to be seen whether the of­ten made promis­es about se­cur­ing our bor­ders will lead to any in­ter­dic­tion and ar­rest re­gard­ing this bar­rel of guns. It is, in our view, im­por­tant to in­di­cate that a bond­ed ware­house is, ac­cord­ing to the laws of Trinidad & To­ba­go a port of en­try and the in­ci­dent yes­ter­day is ac­tu­al­ly a breach of one of our bor­ders.

At a time when the re­ports of dead bod­ies be­ing found all across our coun­try are more ram­pant than ever and im­ages of moth­ers cry­ing for their mur­dered sons is be­com­ing a per­ma­nent fea­ture of our news, it seems to us that this dis­cov­ery of so many dan­ger­ous weapons should be an ur­gent pri­or­i­ty for mul­ti­ple state agen­cies who should be­gin by ques­tion­ing them­selves as to how this could be hap­pen­ing in our Coun­try. The fact that so many vic­tims are re­port­ing the when they are at­tacked all of the per­pe­tra­tors have guns is fur­ther cause for the sit­u­a­tion at this ware­house to be solved.

Ship­ments of car­go from over­seas re­quire rig­or­ous de­c­la­ra­tions; Doc­u­men­ta­tion, ver­i­fi­able iden­ti­fi­ca­tion; De­scrip­tion of con­tents and a Bill of Lad­ing that in­cludes weights and di­men­sions. Sure­ly the ex­ces­sive weight of this bar­rel must have been a clue that some­thing was wrong?

We wish to ap­plaud the Trinidad & To­ba­go Po­lice Ser­vice for re­mov­ing this lat­est threat from our midst but we wish to add that it will not be an ef­fec­tive pro­tec­tion of our cit­i­zens un­til and un­less the ex­porters and lo­cal con­signees of these weapons are ar­rest­ed and brought to jus­tice.