The po­lice dis­cov­ery of 16 high-pow­ered weapons, five pis­tols, thou­sands of rounds of am­mu­ni­tion and $2.6 mil­lion in mar­i­jua­na at the Cen­tral Bond on Fri­day is laud­able but al­so con­cern­ing.

Here were some of the dead­liest forms of guns ac­com­pa­nied by bone-shat­ter­ing 7.62 mm am­mu­ni­tion on their way to our streets to join hun­dreds of sim­i­lar pow­er­ful weapons pos­sessed by vi­cious crim­i­nals.

So­cial me­dia has con­sis­tent­ly ex­posed us to the sights and sounds of rapid-fire shoot­ing in­ci­dents, some of which have harmed and killed chil­dren and oth­er in­no­cent peo­ple caught in the cross­fire.

That such a sup­ply of killing ma­chines was thwart­ed by the po­lice, is a re­lief.

Yet, we re­main con­cerned that there have been no ma­jor ar­rests in re­cent times over the im­por­ta­tion and dis­tri­b­u­tion of guns and am­mu­ni­tion in T&T.

It’s clear that this find was no ran­dom suc­cess.

In fact, Act­ing Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Mc­Don­ald Ja­cob was san­guined that “these seizures were the re­sult of months of metic­u­lous in­tel­li­gence gath­er­ing from an in­tel­li­gence agency with­in the TTPS.”

We ap­plaud the work of this team that un­cov­ered these items but at the same time ask why, in light of such good in­tel­li­gence, there re­mains lit­tle ev­i­dence by way of ar­rests and pros­e­cu­tions, to en­cour­age us that these units gath­er enough to track down those re­spon­si­ble for it.

How of­ten have we heard of ma­jor seizures of il­le­gal items en­ter­ing the coun­try with­out hear­ing about who they were des­tined for? What re­sults do we have of law en­force­ment catch­ing the big fish?

We’ve been bal­anced in this space many times to point out that we don’t ex­pect in­tel­li­gence to be laid bare be­fore the pub­lic on sen­si­tive is­sues. But sure­ly the au­thor­i­ties must know that the re­sults of the in­tel­li­gence are im­por­tant in build­ing pub­lic con­fi­dence and in en­cour­ag­ing those with in­for­ma­tion to come for­ward.

Again, we ac­knowl­edge that in this par­tic­u­lar case, the au­thor­i­ties may very well be on a trail led by deep­er in­tel­li­gence, which even­tu­al­ly re­sults in a ma­jor ar­rest.

But un­til such time, we echo pub­lic sen­ti­ment that find­ing the drugs and guns is not enough. We must find ways to progress these dis­cov­er­ies with the ar­rests and pros­e­cu­tions of con­signees.

We al­so recog­nise that we are not alone in this bat­tle and that work­ing with out­side agen­cies in­creas­es our chances of suc­cess.

Just weeks ago, a joint firearms op­er­a­tion be­tween IN­TER­POL and the Caribbean Com­mu­ni­ty (Cari­com) Im­ple­men­ta­tion Agency for Crime and Se­cu­ri­ty (IM­PACS) be­tween Sep­tem­ber 24 and 30, led to the seizure of 350 weapons, 3,300 rounds of am­mu­ni­tion and record drug hauls across the Caribbean.

Op­er­a­tion Trig­ger VII, as it was called, was spread across 19 Caribbean na­tions, in­clud­ing T&T, where, just like Fri­day’s find at the Cen­tral Bond, guns, am­mu­ni­tion and drugs were found hid­den among food items at ports and ware­hous­es.

The in­tel­li­gence point to or­gan­ised crime groups and in­di­vid­u­als in­volved in firearms traf­fick­ing.

In Do­mini­ca, a con­signee un­der sur­veil­lance was nabbed with 20 pis­tols in ce­re­al box­es when he came to col­lect the items. In Ja­maica, a record US$25 mil­lion worth of co­caine was dis­cov­ered dur­ing the op­er­a­tion and Cu­ra­cao and Bonaire ac­count­ed for 3 tonnes and 4 tonnes re­spec­tive­ly.

What­ev­er may be the rea­son for this height­ened move­ment of drugs and weapons through­out the re­gion, we are grate­ful for the part­ner­ships that have led to our law en­force­ment of­fi­cers stop­ping this batch of il­le­gal weapons and drugs from es­cap­ing them.

Our hopes and faith re­main in these of­fi­cers, that as they con­tin­ue their ded­i­ca­tion to this dan­ger­ous field of work, we will soon see big­ger crack­downs on per­son­nel with a com­men­su­rate re­duc­tion in il­le­gal im­ports like these.