Gail Alexan­der

Se­nior Po­lit­i­cal Re­porter

An au­dit done by the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice (TTPS) from 2016 to 2021 re­vealed sig­nif­i­cant anom­alies in Firearms Users Li­cence (FUL) pro­ce­dures, li­cences grant­ed for the pur­chase of high-pow­ered so­phis­ti­cat­ed weapons, mil­lions of rounds of am­mu­ni­tion per­mit­ted to deal­ers, and house­wives with as many as ten weapons. In one house­hold, there were 33 weapons, and FUL hold­ers ad­mit­ted they paid to fast-track ap­pli­ca­tions.

Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley de­tailed the find­ings in a state­ment to Par­lia­ment yes­ter­day ahead of the up­com­ing mid-year re­cess.

He said that from the in­for­ma­tion he had giv­en Par­lia­ment, it was clear “that we do not on­ly have a prob­lem of il­le­gal en­try; that is bad enough, but we al­so have the le­gal en­try of the var­i­ous items con­tribut­ing to our in­tractable sit­u­a­tion.

Dr Row­ley said sus­tained ef­fort was be­ing ex­pend­ed “to rec­ti­fy this state of af­fairs and hold the rel­e­vant peo­ple ac­count­able.”

Cit­ing se­ri­ous con­cerns, Dr Row­ley said there were and re­main tremen­dous mis­giv­ings, out­rage, and con­cerns in the na­tion­al com­mu­ni­ty re­gard­ing al­le­ga­tions of ram­pant cor­rup­tion and mal­prac­tices re­lat­ing to the is­suance of FULs vari­a­tions and Firearm Im­port Per­mits.

Vari­a­tions en­able a FUL hold­er to pur­chase sev­er­al firearms at the same time. The PM not­ed that when the mat­ter came to the Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Coun­cil’s at­ten­tion, in­ves­ti­ga­tions were ini­ti­at­ed by re­tired As­sis­tant Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice Arthur Bar­ring­ton and re­tired Chief of De­fence Staff Rear Ad­mi­ral Hay­den Pritchard.

An­oth­er was done by a team of re­tired and serv­ing po­lice of­fi­cers as­signed by then Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice (CoP), Mc Don­ald Ja­cob.

A third en­quiry was con­duct­ed by re­tired Jus­tice of Ap­peal Stan­ley John. Dr Row­ley said for­mer CoP Gary Grif­fith sought court ac­tion block­ing the pre­sen­ta­tion to Par­lia­ment and the pub­lic of the po­lice team’s re­port.

Dr Row­ley said, among oth­er com­ments, that the court or­dered that the con­tents of that re­port be in­ves­ti­gat­ed by the TTPS, and on­ly there­after could the re­port be made pub­lic.

He said cur­rent Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Er­la Hare­wood-Christo­pher ini­ti­at­ed an in­ves­ti­ga­tion of the FULs regime for the pe­ri­od 2016–2021. The PM not­ed that cur­rent­ly there are 20 po­lice of­fi­cers be­fore the courts for firearm-re­lat­ed of­fences.

In re­spect of FULs, cer­tain anom­alies were ob­served, Dr Row­ley said.

Among them were the ap­prox­i­mate­ly 7,000 li­cences is­sued, giv­en the rel­a­tive­ly short pe­ri­od of Au­gust 2018 to Sep­tem­ber 2021.

“In that short pe­ri­od, he would have grant­ed more FULs than sev­er­al Po­lice Com­mis­sion­ers com­bined over the years,” Row­ley not­ed.

Sev­er­al ap­pli­ca­tions for pro­vi­sion­al per­mits were un­signed by ap­pli­cants but not yet ap­proved. Li­cenced firearm deal­ers were drop­ping sev­er­al in­com­plete ap­pli­ca­tions to the Firearms Sec­tion on be­half of their clients. Ev­i­dence was seen where files in which di­vi­sion­al heads did not rec­om­mend the grant of a FUL, yet they were ap­proved.

Sev­er­al FULs ap­proved were with­out the req­ui­site Cer­tifi­cate of Char­ac­ter.

Dr Row­ley not­ed that peo­ple who had to an­swer al­le­ga­tions in­volv­ing do­mes­tic vi­o­lence were grant­ed FULs and vari­a­tions, in­clud­ing some on rape charges.

He said a busi­ness­man who was a sus­pect in re­ports of a threat to kill in 2020 ac­quired vari­a­tions and at­tained one car­bine, one ban­shee, one 5.56 ri­fle, one shot­gun, and one pis­tol in 2021.

Dr Row­ley said the prac­tice of CoPs ex­er­cis­ing huge care and re­straint in grant­i­ng vari­a­tions was dra­mat­i­cal­ly changed.

Dur­ing the pe­ri­od un­der re­view, 1,855 vari­a­tions were grant­ed. Some 625 peo­ple got vari­a­tions for ri­fles and sub­ma­chine guns.

“Li­cences were grant­ed to peo­ple who pur­chased high-pow­ered and so­phis­ti­cat­ed weapons. These weapons were con­vert­ed to ful­ly au­to­mat­ic weapons, which are pro­hib­it­ed un­der the act. These weapons in­clude FN Scar 7.62 Ri­fle, the IWI Tavor 5.56 Ri­fle, CZ Scor­pi­on, CM­MG Ban­shee, M&P 15-22 and the Car­bine,” he added.

“Those are the types of weapons, that the then com­mis­sion­er of po­lice au­tho­rised for en­try in­to this coun­try, os­ten­si­bly for per­son­al pro­tec­tion.

“In some cas­es, en­tire fam­i­lies were grant­ed vari­a­tions. There are some fam­i­lies with 25 weapons; one par­tic­u­lar case, 33 weapons in the house­hold. There are house­wives who ac­quired vari­a­tions for eight and hold as many as ten weapons,” Dr Row­ley added

Dr Row­ley said that be­tween Au­gust 2018 and Sep­tem­ber 2021, there was an enor­mous rise in the grant of im­port per­mits to cer­tain pre­ferred firearm deal­ers.

Deal­er’s wife al­so im­port­ing guns, am­mo...

Prime Min­is­ter Kei­th Row­ley al­so said of all the firearm deal­ers in T&T on­ly 15 were heav­i­ly ac­tive and seemed to be favoured.

The to­tal amount of per­mits grant­ed for the pe­ri­od 2016–2021 were 739, where­as the to­tal grant­ed from 18/08/2018–06/09/2021 was 574.

“A Firearm Im­port Per­mit was is­sued to the own­er of a com­pa­ny in Port-of-Spain, who was grant­ed per­mis­sion to im­port 15,000 rounds of train­ing am­mu­ni­tion, ‘on be­half of the TTPS’. In­ves­ti­ga­tions lat­er re­vealed this per­son is not a Li­cenced Firearm Deal­er. One can on­ly con­clude the po­lice ei­ther do not know or pre­tend not to know who the firearm deal­ers are in T&T,” he added.

Large amounts of firearms, am­mu­ni­tion and com­po­nents/ac­ces­sories were ap­proved for im­por­ta­tion dur­ing 2018-2021 pe­ri­od. The ac­tu­al amounts could not be quan­ti­fied since some Firearms Deal­ers were not sub­mit­ting their re­turns to the COP, as re­quired by law

One deal­er in­di­cat­ed that he was not in pos­ses­sion of reg­is­ters for three years and that his books had been stolen by a for­mer em­ploy­ee. How­ev­er, no re­port of this “theft” has ever been re­port­ed to the TTPS.

A serv­ing po­lice of­fi­cer, own­er of a se­cu­ri­ty firm, ob­tained his deal­ers' li­cence in 2020. He was grant­ed 21 Firearms Im­port Per­mits for the im­por­ta­tion of some 21,533 firearms; 23,015,000 rounds of am­mu­ni­tion; and 1,648 com­po­nent parts/ac­ces­sories.

Two oth­er deal­ers–one, his spouse–was grant­ed li­cences to im­port in ex­cess of ten mil­lion rounds of as­sort­ed am­mu­ni­tion

An­oth­er deal­er was grant­ed per­mis­sion to im­port 9,000,000 rounds of as­sort­ed am­mu­ni­tion, dur­ing the same pe­ri­od.

“The ex­ces­sive amounts of firearms, am­mu­ni­tion and com­po­nents/ac­ces­sories that was ap­proved for im­por­ta­tion begs the ques­tion whether the mar­ket of le­gal firearm own­ers in T&T was ro­bust enough to sup­port that lev­el of arms and am­mu­ni­tion,” Dr Row­ley added.

An­oth­er deal­er was grant­ed ap­proval to im­port 22,610 firearms, ten mil­lion, four hun­dred and sev­en­ty-sev­en thou­sand, five hun­dred rounds of am­mu­ni­tion and 26,900 com­po­nent parts/ac­ces­sories. In­ves­ti­ga­tions re­vealed there is no file le­git­imis­ing her role as a firearms deal­er at the Firearms Sec­tion. The on­ly doc­u­men­ta­tion avail­able is a let­ter from her hus­band, to the then com­mis­sion­er of po­lice re­quest­ing that his name be re­moved as an im­port deal­er and re­placed by hers.

Al­though he had sur­ren­dered his im­port li­cence, he sub­se­quent­ly ap­plied to im­port firearms, am­mu­ni­tion and com­po­nents/ac­ces­sories and was grant­ed fur­ther ap­proval.

Gary re­sponds

For­mer CoP Gary Grif­fith said that Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley has yet again used Par­lia­ment to fool the coun­try based on his ob­ses­sion with le­gal firearms.

In re­sponse to the Prime Min­ster's state­ment in the Low­er House yes­ter­day, Griffth said, Dr Row­ley's "dan­ger­ous in­fat­u­a­tion con­tin­ues to over­shad­ow the re­al is­sue of il­le­gal firearms, which have been re­spon­si­ble for the vast ma­jor­i­ty of mur­ders in Trinidad and To­ba­go, two of which re­ports sug­gest oc­curred just to­day in the same area of the Prime Min­is­ter's res­i­dence."

Grif­fith said, "He can­not name the peo­ple who broke the law. He can­not name the firearm deal­ers who broke the law. He can­not name the firearm hold­ers who broke the law. Be­cause, if all these al­le­ga­tions are true, why has one per­son been charged in four years for any such al­le­ga­tion, ex­cept for an in­di­vid­ual who was ar­rest­ed based on be­ing vir­tu­al­ly kid­napped in Bar­ba­dos."

The for­mer top cop has urged the Gov­ern­ment to lead by ex­am­ple.

"If le­gal firearms are such an is­sue, then re­turn the many FULs that your min­is­ters and your friends ac­quired and it is still in their pos­ses­sion."