A con­tin­gent of law en­force­ment of­fi­cers from the Po­lice Ser­vice and Cus­toms and Ex­cise Di­vi­sion made a ma­jor bust of high-pow­ered guns, am­mu­ni­tion and equip­ment dur­ing a raid at a bond lo­cat­ed at the Pi­ar­co In­ter­na­tion­al Air­port Thurs­day night.

A pack­age, which in­clud­ed 30 firearms and 762 rounds of as­sort­ed am­mu­ni­tion, came from the Unit­ed States and was found at the La­parkan Bond in Pi­ar­co.

It in­clud­ed 15 high-pow­ered weapons, 13 pis­tols, one re­volver, a shot­gun, four po­lice sirens, four po­lice blue lights, a bul­let-proof vest, and a va­ri­ety of mag­a­zines.

It al­so in­clud­ed 293 rounds of 5.56 am­mu­ni­tion, 321 rounds of 9mm am­mu­ni­tion, 32 rounds of 12-gauge car­tridges, 25 rounds of .380 am­mu­ni­tion, 91 rounds of 10mm am­mu­ni­tion, 28 ri­fle mag­a­zines, sev­en ex­tend­ed 9mm mag­a­zines, 21 reg­u­lar 9mm mag­a­zines, one 5.56 drum mag­a­zine, three 9mm drum mag­a­zines, two shot­gun bar­rel chokes, a tac­ti­cal bag, six black bal­a­clavas, four 5.56 mag­a­zine hold­ers and a pack­et of pills be­lieved to be Ec­sta­sy.

Po­lice say that some­time around March 15, they had re­ceived in­for­ma­tion from their in­ter­na­tion­al part­ners to be on the look­out for the im­por­ta­tion of arms and am­mu­ni­tion en­ter­ing T&T.

On April 20, fur­ther in­for­ma­tion was re­ceived and the pack­age was iden­ti­fied at the bond.

Po­lice said when the ship­ment came in it had no con­signee name on it.

How­ev­er, in­ves­ti­ga­tors sus­pect that it may have been sent for a busi­ness­man in North Trinidad.

In an im­me­di­ate re­ac­tion, Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice, Gary Grif­fith said “It’s a war out there.”

Grif­fith said the sit­u­a­tion is grave giv­en the fact that the weapons came in via a le­git­i­mate port of en­try and added that he was li­ais­ing with the Min­istry of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty on it.

“It sums up the sit­u­a­tion that the weapons found are weapons of war and can and would be used against law-abid­ing cit­i­zens and po­lice of­fi­cers. It’s a war, that’s what it is, it’s a war out there,” Grif­fith said.

He as­sured how­ev­er that if the aim is to have such weapons to hurt the cit­i­zens and the po­lice that “the po­lice, we will re­spond with equal force.”

“Peo­ple seem con­cerned but I need to en­sure of­fi­cers can de­fend them­selves and pro­tect the cit­i­zens,” the top cop said.

Grif­fith told the pub­lic to take note of the types of weapons be­ing un­cov­ered and seized.

“That what you see there is weapons of war and they want us to fight with kid gloves. That’s what hap­pened in years gone by and they dom­i­nat­ed cer­tain places.”

Grif­fith said it was clear that crim­i­nals in­tend­ed to have clan­des­tine op­er­a­tions to im­i­tate po­lice of­fi­cers and he in­tend­ed to work close­ly with “in­tel­li­gence al­lies” to try and see how best they could put an end to this.

Grif­fith dis­closed that the Po­lice Ser­vice seized 1,000 il­le­gal weapons a year.

“But if one con­tain­er gets in un­no­ticed all those seizures in a year can get back in one night,” he added.

This is the sec­ond firearm and am­mu­ni­tion bust for this week.

On Wednes­day, po­lice and Cus­toms of­fi­cials found and seized nine ri­fle mag­a­zines, 11 pis­tol mag­a­zines, one AR-15 butt, one AR-15 bar­rel, three pis­tol slides and one re­volver from a 28-year-old Tacarigua busi­ness­man, dur­ing an an­ti-crime ex­er­cise.

He was sub­se­quent­ly held for ques­tion­ing.