An in­tel­li­gence-led erad­i­ca­tion ex­er­cise on Fri­day in Mo­ri­ah, To­ba­go, re­sult­ed in the de­struc­tion of ap­prox­i­mate­ly $5 mil­lion worth of cannabis.

Act­ing on in­for­ma­tion re­ceived, Po­lice Con­sta­ble An­toine led a group of of­fi­cers ap­prox­i­mate­ly 900 me­tres in­to a forest­ed area near the Springs of Cas­tara in Cas­tara. There, the of­fi­cers de­tect­ed a strong scent of cannabis.

A search of the lo­ca­tion un­cov­ered ap­prox­i­mate­ly 626 grow­ing cannabis trees and 1,500 grams of dried plant-like ma­te­r­i­al re­sem­bling cannabis.

The es­ti­mat­ed to­tal street val­ue of the dis­cov­ery is $5,012,800. The of­fi­cers de­stroyed the cannabis trees and the dried ma­te­r­i­al on site by cut­ting and burn­ing them.

In an of­fi­cial state­ment on the ex­er­cise, the Trinidad and To­ba­go Po­lice Ser­vice re­it­er­at­ed its con­tin­ued com­mit­ment “to re­duc­ing the avail­abil­i­ty of il­le­gal drugs, dis­rupt­ing drug-re­lat­ed op­er­a­tions, and en­sur­ing the safe­ty and se­cu­ri­ty of cit­i­zens.”

The op­er­a­tion, con­duct­ed be­tween 5:45 am and 7:25 am, was led by W/As­sis­tant Su­per­in­ten­dent Ag Williams and In­spec­tor Bac­chus. The team al­so in­clud­ed W/Ag Sergeant Gor­don-Har­ris and Ag Sergeant Mc Mil­lan. Su­per­vi­sion was pro­vid­ed by W/Cor­po­ral Al­fred and Ag Cor­po­ral Fer­gu­son.

The ex­er­cise in­volved per­son­nel from the To­ba­go Di­vi­sion­al Task Force - Area North, West and East, of­fi­cers of the Po­lice Ca­nine Unit, and mem­bers of the Trinidad and To­ba­go Reg­i­ment.