An­na-Lisa Paul

Se­nior Re­porter

an­na-lisa.paul@guardian.co.tt

The sev­en po­lice of­fi­cers ar­rest­ed in con­nec­tion with the dis­ap­pear­ance of three firearms and a quan­ti­ty of am­mu­ni­tion from the Cen­tral Po­lice Sta­tion (CPS) on St Vin­cent Street, Port-of-Spain, on Mon­day re­main in cus­tody.

Se­nior po­lice of­fi­cials con­firmed that no charges have been laid against the group, whose ranks range from an act­ing sergeant to con­sta­ble.

Two fe­male of­fi­cers are among the sev­en ar­rest­ed. The group in­cludes one act­ing sergeant two act­ing cor­po­rals, one of whom is a woman; and four con­sta­bles, one of whom is al­so a woman.

The of­fi­cers, who would have been on the shift on Tues­day when the guns and am­mu­ni­tion were dis­cov­ered miss­ing from the ar­moury, were still be­ing ques­tioned up to yes­ter­day.

The miss­ing items in­clude three Glock pis­tols, three mag­a­zines and 45 rounds of .9 mm am­mu­ni­tion.

The items had been lodged for safe­keep­ing by mu­nic­i­pal po­lice of­fi­cers at­tached to the Port-of-Spain Di­vi­sion on Mon­day.

A firearms check on Tues­day re­vealed that the arms and am­mu­ni­tion were miss­ing.

An in­ves­ti­ga­tion was im­me­di­ate­ly launched.

Pre­lim­i­nary in­for­ma­tion sug­gest­ed it may have been an “ad­min­is­tra­tive er­ror” but this was de­bunked by the cor­po­rate com­mu­ni­ca­tions man­ag­er of the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice (TTPS), Joanne Archie, dur­ing Wednes­day’s week­ly me­dia brief­ing.

Tues­day’s dis­cov­ery comes al­most four months af­ter the ar­moury at the San Fer­nan­do Mu­nic­i­pal Po­lice Sta­tion was found emp­tied of arms and am­mu­ni­tion.

The emp­ty vault was dis­cov­ered on April 19, at the same time the body of Cpl Anus­ka Ever­s­ley was found in the sta­tion at King’s Wharf, La­dy Hailes Av­enue.

Fol­low­ing that in­ci­dent, the TTPS ini­ti­at­ed a firearms au­dit to de­ter­mine the num­ber of firearms and am­mu­ni­tion that were stolen. The au­dit is yet to be com­plet­ed.

Mu­nic­i­pal po­lice of­fi­cers were sub­se­quent­ly in­struct­ed to lodge their firearms at po­lice sta­tions, as stricter se­cu­ri­ty mea­sures were put in place by the TTPS to en­sure ac­count­abil­i­ty.