A 40-year-old labour­er was fined $30,000 on one count of pos­ses­sion of a shot­gun and pos­ses­sion of one 12-gauge car­tridge by a San­gre Grande Mag­is­trate, on Mon­day, De­cem­ber 11, 2023.

An of­fi­cial state­ment from the Po­lice Ser­vice re­ports that GER­ALD JOSEPH, of To­co Main Road, Ba­lan­dra, plead­ed guilty to the of­fences, and was fined $15,000 on each of the charges by Mag­is­trate Cheron Raphael.

Joseph was giv­en 12 months to pay the fines or serve three years hard labour in de­fault.

He was charged on De­cem­ber 8, 2023, by Cpl An­drews, of the To­co Po­lice Sta­tion, who had led a raid in search of firearms and am­mu­ni­tion at the sus­pect’s home.

Ac­cord­ing to po­lice re­ports, at 1:35 pm on De­cem­ber 8, po­lice of­fi­cers ex­e­cut­ed a search war­rant at Joseph’s home dur­ing which they al­leged­ly found the firearm and am­mu­ni­tion.

He was im­me­di­ate­ly ar­rest­ed and sub­se­quent­ly charged with the of­fences.

The op­er­a­tion was co­or­di­nat­ed by In­spec­tor (Ag.) Sankar and su­per­vised Sgt Ed­wards.  It in­clud­ed per­son­nel from the To­co Po­lice Sta­tion and the Mount­ed & Ca­nine Branch.