Cit­i­zens would have been stunned yet again yes­ter­day by news of an­oth­er ma­jor arms and am­mu­ni­tion cache that made its way in­to Trinidad and To­ba­go via a le­gal port of en­try. More sig­nif­i­cant­ly, how­ev­er, was the state­ment by Min­is­ter of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Fitzger­ald Hinds that in­tel­li­gence sug­gests the ac­tiv­i­ty was part of a sin­is­ter plot by the crim­i­nal el­e­ment.

This the­o­ry was of­fered by Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Gary Grif­fith last week when of­fi­cers made a sim­i­lar find at the Pi­ar­co Air­port bond, which was the sec­ond of three seizures now in un­der two weeks.

This may be the on­ly con­clu­sion one can ar­rive at giv­en the so­phis­ti­ca­tion of some of the weapon­ry which in­di­vid­u­als have at­tempt­ed to smug­gle in­to the coun­try. All three times, they used tra­di­tion­al meth­ods for which both Cus­toms and Ex­cise and the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice should be aware and well pre­pared for by way of prop­er sur­veilling mech­a­nisms in place.

In­deed, that three such ship­ments have been seized in such a short space of time prob­a­bly sug­gests oth­ers have slipped past au­thor­i­ties un­de­tect­ed. Hav­ing had the ex­pe­ri­ence of the 1990 at­tempt­ed coup by the Ja­maat-al-Mus­limeen and the in­tel­li­gence that was said to have been cir­cu­lat­ing be­fore that at­tack, the cur­rent sce­nario is fright­en­ing.

In this re­gard, Com­mis­sion­er Grif­fith Min­is­ter Hinds need to have crit­i­cal con­ver­sa­tions on the Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Coun­cil for an­oth­er look at se­cu­ri­ty mech­a­nisms at our ports of en­try im­me­di­ate­ly. This is be­cause in the­o­ry, these weapons should not have been able to reach the points where they were seized by the po­lice - un­less, of course, it was a de­lib­er­ate act to catch the con­signees on this end. From the re­spons­es by both Com­mis­sion­er Grif­fith and Min­is­ter Hinds, we are not com­fort­able that law en­force­ment was in­deed set­ting any traps for the per­pe­tra­tors.

Dur­ing a Joint Se­lect Com­mit­tee on the preva­lence of il­le­gal firearms in T&T in 2019, cit­i­zens learned there were scan­ners at the ma­jor ports at Port-of-Spain and Point Lisas. Fur­ther­more, Port of Port-of-Spain CEO Ri­car­do Gon­za­les re­vealed that they could scan an av­er­age of 33 con­tain­ers dai­ly. A scan takes 30 sec­onds, Mr Gon­za­les said, and they processed four con­tain­ers an hour. Stun­ning­ly, then Comp­trol­ler of Cus­toms and Ex­cise Vidyah Mar­cial al­so told the JSC there had been no de­tec­tion of weapons or nar­cotics via the scan­ning process, al­though they were in op­er­a­tion since Oc­to­ber 2018.

Giv­en the cur­rent pro­lif­er­a­tion of guns in this coun­try, we find that hard to fath­om. Per­haps, then it may be time to re­view the Asy­cu­da sys­tem which ran­dom­ly se­lects con­tain­ers for scan­ning along­side beef­ing up the Cus­toms de­part­ment or of­fer­ing more TTPS sup­port on the over­sight of the process.

Min­is­ter Hinds was the chair of that 2019 JSC, so he will be fa­mil­iar with the sit­u­a­tion. More im­por­tant­ly, how­ev­er, he is now in a po­si­tion to do more than just give lip ser­vice to deal­ing with what is clear­ly a clear and present dan­ger.