$5m cannabis fields destroyed in Moruga crackdown

In a ma­jor sup­pres­sion ex­er­cise, of­fi­cers of the Trinidad and To­ba­go Po­lice Ser­vice (TTPS) de­stroyed ap­prox­i­mate­ly 5,000 ful­ly grown cannabis trees val­ued at $5 mil­lion in the La Lune For­est, Moru­ga, on Tues­day.

The op­er­a­tion was co­or­di­nat­ed by ACP Tee­warie of the Crim­i­nal In­ves­ti­ga­tions Branch, along­side Se­nior Su­per­in­ten­dent Ed­wards of the Spe­cial In­ves­ti­ga­tions Unit, Se­nior Su­per­in­ten­dent Hospedales, Su­per­in­ten­dent Bertie, Woman Su­per­in­ten­dent Bridglal, As­sis­tant Su­per­in­ten­dents Pacheco, Ram­saran and Chul­han, In­spec­tor Charles, and Act­ing Sergeant Dhu­ram of the South­ern Di­vi­sion.

Su­per­vi­sion on the ground was led by Sgt. Lee and Cpl. See­lals­ingh of the Jun­gle Op­er­a­tions Team, with sup­port from of­fi­cers of the Moru­ga Po­lice Sta­tion, the Air Sup­port Unit, the Jun­gle Op­er­a­tions Team, and the South­ern Di­vi­sion Task Force.

Dur­ing the ex­er­cise, of­fi­cers un­cov­ered two cannabis fields span­ning rough­ly one and a half acres. The fields con­tained thou­sands of ma­ture plants ready for har­vest, rep­re­sent­ing a sig­nif­i­cant blow to the il­le­gal trade in the re­gion. In ad­di­tion to de­stroy­ing the plants, po­lice al­so dis­man­tled wa­ter con­tain­ers and cul­ti­va­tion equip­ment used to main­tain the plan­ta­tions.

Au­thor­i­ties em­pha­sized that the op­er­a­tion forms part of on­go­ing ef­forts to sup­press il­le­gal drug cul­ti­va­tion and dis­tri­b­u­tion across Trinidad and To­ba­go. The TTPS has pledged con­tin­ued vig­i­lance in rur­al ar­eas where cannabis fields are of­ten hid­den in dense forest­ed ter­rain.

The de­struc­tion of the Moru­ga fields un­der­scores the scale of il­lic­it cul­ti­va­tion and the chal­lenges faced by law en­force­ment in tack­ling or­ga­nized drug ac­tiv­i­ty. Po­lice of­fi­cials not­ed that such ex­er­cis­es are crit­i­cal to re­duc­ing the avail­abil­i­ty of il­le­gal sub­stances and dis­rupt­ing net­works that prof­it from them.