Firearm, police items seized in Couva anti-crime exercise

Cou­va po­lice of­fi­cers re­cov­ered a firearm, am­mu­ni­tion, and po­lice-is­sued items dur­ing an an­ti-crime ex­er­cise late Tues­day night.

Ac­cord­ing to re­ports, at ap­prox­i­mate­ly 10:40 p.m. on June 30, of­fi­cers at­tached to the CID/CRO Spe­cial Op­er­a­tions Unit, act­ing on in­tel­li­gence, con­duct­ed a search near a car park along Toolsie Street, Cou­va.

Dur­ing the op­er­a­tion, of­fi­cers dis­cov­ered a pouch hid­den in a bushy area. In­side, they found a Glock 19 Gen 4 pis­tol fit­ted with a mag­a­zine con­tain­ing fif­teen rounds of am­mu­ni­tion. Al­so re­cov­ered were a Ky­dex hol­ster, a Trinidad and To­ba­go Po­lice Ser­vice iden­ti­fi­ca­tion card and badge, and a Firearm User’s Li­cence book­let.

Crime Scene In­ves­ti­ga­tors processed the lo­ca­tion, and all items were seized. In­ves­ti­ga­tions in­to the cir­cum­stances sur­round­ing the dis­cov­ery are on­go­ing and are be­ing han­dled by the Cou­va Crim­i­nal In­ves­ti­ga­tions De­part­ment.

The ex­er­cise was spear­head­ed by Snr. Supt. Pa­ri­man and su­per­vised by Ag. Sgt. Castil­lo. Both of­fi­cers em­pha­sized the im­por­tance of in­tel­li­gence-led op­er­a­tions in tack­ling il­le­gal firearms and re­lat­ed crim­i­nal ac­tiv­i­ty.

The Trinidad and To­ba­go Po­lice Ser­vice con­tin­ues to urge mem­bers of the pub­lic to share in­for­ma­tion on il­le­gal weapons and sus­pi­cious ac­tiv­i­ty. Cit­i­zens can con­tact the Cou­va CID, their near­est po­lice sta­tion, or re­port anony­mous­ly through Crime Stop­pers at 800-TIPS (8477).

Au­thor­i­ties have not­ed that the re­cov­ery of po­lice-is­sued items along­side the firearm rais­es se­ri­ous con­cerns, and in­ves­ti­ga­tors are work­ing to de­ter­mine how these items came to be in unau­tho­rized pos­ses­sion.

The TTPS has re­it­er­at­ed its com­mit­ment to main­tain­ing pub­lic safe­ty and re­duc­ing gun-re­lat­ed crime across the coun­try. Of­fi­cials say ex­er­cis­es like the one in Cou­va are part of a broad­er strat­e­gy to dis­rupt crim­i­nal net­works and safe­guard com­mu­ni­ties.

Res­i­dents are en­cour­aged to re­main vig­i­lant and co­op­er­ate with law en­force­ment ef­forts, as po­lice con­tin­ue to in­ten­si­fy op­er­a­tions in high-risk ar­eas.