Joint Se­lect Com­mit­tee chair­man Fitzger­ald Hinds' star­tling claim yes­ter­day that there are 8,000 il­le­gal guns across T&T would have brought more dis­com­fort to a pop­u­la­tion al­ready trou­bled by the con­tin­u­ing lev­els of gun-re­lat­ed vi­o­lence plagu­ing the so­ci­ety. Read­ing from a Strate­gic Ser­vices Agency (SSA) re­port in Par­lia­ment, Hinds said what was even more dis­turb­ing was the fact that al­though the ma­jor­i­ty were hand­guns, there were al­so many high-pow­ered as­sault weapons among the lot. These weapons, he said, were more so­phis­ti­cat­ed and of­ten used in gang war­fare.

The re­lease of the in­for­ma­tion comes even as the pub­lic is in the mid­dle of a de­bate on al­leged gang mem­bers ben­e­fit­ing from state con­tracts over the years. Prof­its from these con­tracts are in turn pumped back in­to gang ac­tiv­i­ty and guns are a key tool in a gang­ster's trade. It is thus a valid ar­gu­ment that we may be reap­ing the whirl­wind from this ap­par­ent con­tin­u­ing in­dis­cre­tion.

The T&T Po­lice Ser­vice has been try­ing its best to erad­i­cate the flow of guns in­to the coun­try for decades. Un­for­tu­nate­ly, this seems to be a los­ing bat­tle since the crim­i­nal el­e­ments al­ways find more in­no­v­a­tive ways to ac­quire them, fu­elled in part by the fact that guns are eas­i­ly smug­gled in­to the coun­try, of­ten along­side drug tran­ship­ments, due to our porous bor­ders.

A gun amnesty was bandied about sev­er­al years ago as one of the ways of elim­i­nat­ing the guns on the streets. But those al­ready in­clined to ac­quir­ing weapons il­le­gal­ly are al­so un­like­ly to take up this of­fer. It is our hope, there­fore, that some­where with­in the SSA's many re­ports and TTPS's strat­e­gy are con­crete plans to stop the cur­rent flow.

Re­cruit bilin­gual cops

Rev­e­la­tions this week of the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice's prob­lems in forg­ing ahead with their in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­to a group of Chi­nese na­tion­als be­lieved to be in­volved in a sex ring, due to their in­abil­i­ty to com­mu­ni­cate with them in their lan­guage, may have caught the pub­lic by sur­prise.

Giv­en the in­creas­ing num­bers of for­eign na­tion­als who now live with­in our bor­ders, many of them from South Amer­i­ca and Venezuela in par­tic­u­lar, one would have thought that the TTPS would have by now ei­ther been re­cruit­ing or train­ing of­fi­cers to be bilin­gual so as to fa­cil­i­tate this im­por­tant as­pect of their in­ves­ti­ga­tions.

This case, giv­en the TTPS's claims that the ac­tiv­i­ty may have an in­ter­na­tion­al el­e­ment, may yet be the cat­a­lyst to such a dri­ve.

Con­grats to Mr Lon­don

Fyz­abad-born Ronal­do Lon­don has joined the list of Car­ni­val 2019 win­ners af­ter tak­ing this year's Young Kings Ca­lyp­so ti­tle at the Queen's Park Sa­van­nah on Tues­day night. Mr Lon­don is from a fam­i­ly with ca­lyp­so in its blood, but for his achieve­ment in do­ing so in his first try in the com­pe­ti­tion, we of­fer him a hearty con­grat­u­la­tions.