Firearms report: Rise in pistol seizures; more women joining gangs

Shane Su­perville

Se­nior Re­porter

shane.su­[email protected]

Re­cent da­ta pub­lished by the Small Arms Sur­vey sug­gests that while there has been a rel­a­tive­ly small in­crease in the num­ber of au­to­mat­ic weapons be­ing seized, hand­guns (pis­tols and re­volvers) are the most com­mon cat­e­go­ry of firearm re­cov­ered by au­thor­i­ties.

The quan­ti­ty of weapons found and oth­er trends in gun traf­fick­ing and vi­o­lent crimes were high­light­ed in a re­port com­piled by the sur­vey in col­lab­o­ra­tion with Cari­com IM­PACS, the Caribbean Pub­lic Health Agency (CARPHA) and the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies (UWI).

The re­port ti­tled Path­way to Pol­i­cy: Firearms Traf­fick­ing and Pub­lic Health in the Caribbean, ac­knowl­edged that while there has been a “mod­est rise” in the seizure of AK and AR-type ri­fles in re­cent years, they still re­flect a gen­er­al­ly small per­cent­age of the to­tal num­ber of guns seized.

Speak­ing with Guardian Me­dia on Tues­day, se­nior re­searcher with the Small Arms Sur­vey Matt Schroed­er says traf­fick­ing trends, as it re­lates to the kind of guns seized, has not changed to a large ex­tent over the years.

The re­port notes that most high-ca­pac­i­ty mag­a­zines—ca­pa­ble of hold­ing in ex­cess of 30 to 50 rounds of am­mu­ni­tion—were typ­i­cal­ly seized from ship­ments bound to ei­ther T&T or the Do­mini­can Re­pub­lic.

He said such large weapons and weapon ac­ces­sories tend to on­ly be in de­mand for crim­i­nals in coun­tries where there is fierce op­po­si­tion ei­ther from law en­force­ment or ri­val crim­i­nal gangs.

How­ev­er, when con­tact­ed for com­ment, As­sis­tant Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice (ACP) in charge of the Crim­i­nal Di­vi­sion Richard Smith ac­knowl­edged that lo­cal po­lice have al­so ob­served trends where the most com­mon type of gun seized from crim­i­nals was pis­tols.

He notes that it was gen­er­al­ly more com­mon for po­lice to find and seize weapons as it was more con­ve­nient and portable for them to car­ry to com­mit crimes of rob­bery, while larg­er cal­i­bre weapons were kept for di­rect con­flict with oth­er gangs.

Smith al­so ac­knowl­edged that it was in­creas­ing­ly dif­fi­cult for po­lice to find as­sault ri­fles.

“We have few­er re­cov­ery of ri­fles than we do the pis­tols, be­cause those are the guns eas­i­er to car­ry around on a dai­ly ba­sis.

“What we no­ticed too in our op­er­a­tions and search­es is that it’s more dif­fi­cult to find the ri­fles be­cause they hide them away from where they live and most times we find it hid­den in some bush­es or an­oth­er per­son’s home we may not con­sid­er a per­son-of-in­ter­est, so the ri­fles are hard­er to get be­cause they come out less of­ten than the pis­tols.”

He said that de­spite this rel­a­tive short­age in seizures of au­to­mat­ic ri­fles, such weapons were still avail­able and said it high­light­ed the need for more po­lice­work to be done in find­ing them.

Da­ta pre­sent­ed in the re­port al­so showed that be­tween 2021 to 2024, 81 per cent of guns seized in T&T have been traced to a US re­tail pur­chas­er.

Schroed­er says this shows that the gun was bought from a le­git­i­mate US-based gun re­tail­er and like­ly sold to an end-user in T&T where it was used by crim­i­nals.

This trend, com­mon­ly re­ferred to as “straw pur­chas­ing,” is a com­mon fea­ture in gun traf­fick­ing out of the US and is chal­leng­ing be­cause of how dif­fi­cult it is to trace and con­nect to a sin­gle point of pur­chase.

Da­ta in the re­port al­so sug­gest­ed that in T&T the in­volve­ment of women and youths in gangs in­creased, with some women “as­sum­ing more se­nior roles” in gangs.

Com­ment­ing on this trend, ACP Smith ac­knowl­edged that po­lice were aware of this phe­nom­e­non as on­go­ing an­ti-crime op­er­a­tions un­der the State of Emer­gency meant that the lead­er­ship and hi­er­ar­chy of gangs may change, al­low­ing women to step in­to pos­si­ble lead­er­ship roles for these or­gan­i­sa­tions.

“We have been see­ing women tak­ing ma­jor roles in gangs.

“Now that we have been plac­ing the gang lead­ers on Pre­ven­ta­tive De­ten­tion Or­ders to have them de­tained, we see women emerg­ing as lead­ers in these dif­fer­ent gangs.

“We are al­so see­ing women be­ing in­volved in crimes tak­ing place like home in­va­sion, rob­bery, lar­ce­ny mo­tor ve­hi­cles.”

Smith not­ed that while there has al­ways been some in­volve­ment of women in crim­i­nal­i­ty, re­cent trends showed that it was much more preva­lent.

In No­vem­ber, 16 Pre­ven­ta­tive De­ten­tion Or­ders were is­sued for re­put­ed gang mem­bers, in­clud­ing a Diego Mar­tin woman who was de­scribed as be­ing a “hon­ey trap” for a gang, mean­ing she was ac­cused of lur­ing men in­to am­bush­es staged by oth­er mem­bers of the gang.