THREAT TO THE STATE – PM alarmed as police find high-calibre guns, ammo

THE Prime Minister on Thursday lamented that a cache of heavy-duty firearms seized by the police in Santa Cruz on Wednesday had posed a threat to the very state of Trinidad and Tobago.

He was speaking in the budget debate in the House of Representatives.

Commissioner of Police Erla Harewood-Christopher said on Wednesday the police were undaunted by criminals amid their "historic" seizure of AR15s, M16s, mini Uzis, 50 calibre rifles, 12-gauge shotguns, and ammunition of 7.62 mm and 5.56 mm calibres plus 6.5 mm armour-piercing bullets.

Dr Rowley told MPs that TT, as part of Caricom, had confronted the influx of illegal guns by making specific requests to the US, as the source country for guns.

He asked MPs to look at a newspaper's front-page photo of the arms cache.

"The point is tables full of heavy weapons. Not handguns for personal protection." The PM said the cache had surpassed the seizures of assault rifles.

"Those 50-calibre weapons are a threat, not to people or to gangs, you know. They are a threat to the state of TT.

"You have to ask yourself whose sons and daughters, and nephews and boyfriends...Who are these people who are bringing these things into this country?

"And for what purpose?"

Rowley said such individuals must get no mollycoddling from the rest of the population.

"These are national security threats."

Addressing Opposition MPs, he said, "You will do well to stand with the Government in opposition to those who want to harm us with those weapons.

"And you will do well to stop the nonsense talk about 'knocking it' and 'emptying clip' and 'knocking 'matic,' because what you do when you talk them kind of thing there is to give them (criminals) the impression that what they are doing is God's service and it's fashionable."

Rowley said the public must condemn individuals making a life of crime, and not the police.

"If we didn't have a proper police service, these 35 weapons – that group alone has the potential to bring about great harm to any and all the people of TT.

"It takes the police service first to identify them and then to apprehend them and then to bring them to the court and then to lead evidence against them."

He said while the police service had its shortcomings, by and large its officers deserved to be congratulated.

On December 9, 2021 Belmont Police Station was shot at in a brazen attack by gunmen, while on October 18, 2021 the police denied reports of shots being fired at the Besson Street Police Station.
On July 27, 1990, about 100 armed members of the Jamaat al Muslimeen bombed the police headquarters in Port of Spain, and stormed Parliament, TTT and Radio Trinidad, seeking the Government's resignation, in a failed attempted coup lasting six days.

Rowley said of the state of crime , "It is very depressing when other arms of the state don't seem to understand what we are dealing with."

Amid the existence of date-rape drugs, Rowley complained of easy bail awarded to an individual caught manufacturing illegal drugs, a South Trinidad businessman.

"So when you go and you hear about young ladies going out to a function somewhere and somebody puts something in their drink – it could be your daughter, your niece, your nephew (sic) – and their physical and emotional state is changed (and) they could be kidnapped, raped or assaulted in some way, and then you find the (drug) factory and you find the manufacturer in the factory, and then they put him on $100,000 bail, you could not be serious!

"We couldn't be fighting the same fight. Those of us who are fighting this fight are damn annoyed about that."

Rowley said policemen and women put their lives on the line nightly, but when armed criminals are confronted, they become "victims of our nonsense."

Seeking help from everyone against crime, he said, "This fight has to be a fight of our entire nation if we are to win it."

The PM asked if Opposition MPs would support any new measures to legally permit the police to publish crime suspects' photos in newspapers, as in past years.

In exasperation, he said TT's laws were designed for "another people, another time and another behaviour pattern."

Addressing Opposition remarks that 13-year-old Andrea Lallan, who was killed with her uncle Sylvan Lallan in Rio Claro, should have been under witness protection, Rowley said she had first to report a crime and later enter witness protection.

"If a crime is not reported. how in God (sic) could it become part of the witness protection programme? Witness to what? An unreported crime?"

He said TT's Justice Protection Programme protected 401 people, comprising 145 witnesses and 256 family members, at a cost of $200 million a year.

Rowley said he hoped the Opposition would support a pending bill to create a national statistical institute.