Two cops detained over missing municipal police guns in PoS

An­na-Lisa Paul

Se­nior Re­porter

an­[email protected]

Two po­lice of­fi­cers have been de­tained in con­nec­tion with the in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­to the dis­ap­pear­ance of three firearms and a quan­ti­ty of am­mu­ni­tion from the Cen­tral Po­lice Sta­tion on St Vin­cent Street, Port-of-Spain. The de­ten­tion was con­firmed late yes­ter­day by po­lice of­fi­cials.

Re­spond­ing to ques­tions dur­ing yes­ter­day’s T&T Po­lice Ser­vice week­ly me­dia brief­ing, cor­po­rate com­mu­ni­ca­tions man­ag­er Joanne Archie said three Glock pis­tols, along with three mag­a­zines and 45 rounds of .9 mm am­mu­ni­tion, were lodged at the Cen­tral Po­lice Sta­tion for safe­keep­ing around 2.47 pm on Mon­day by mu­nic­i­pal po­lice of­fi­cers at­tached to the Port-of-Spain Di­vi­sion.

A firearms check around 3.40 am on Tues­day re­vealed the arms and am­mu­ni­tion were miss­ing, fol­low­ing which an in­ves­ti­ga­tion was im­me­di­ate­ly launched.

Asked to re­spond to pre­lim­i­nary in­for­ma­tion sug­gest­ing it may have been an “ad­min­is­tra­tive er­ror” that led to the guns and am­mu­ni­tion be­ing un­ac­count­ed for, Archie de­clined to say much, urg­ing peo­ple to al­low the in­ves­ti­ga­tion to pro­ceed with­out un­due spec­u­la­tion.

“I do not have any up­date on that in­for­ma­tion and it may very well turn out to be ad­min­is­tra­tive. How­ev­er, I will let the in­ves­tiga­tive process take its course, and we will up­date the pub­lic as it pro­gress­es,” she said.

Archie said the in­ves­ti­ga­tion will in­clude a care­ful ex­am­i­na­tion of when the firearms were tak­en to the sta­tion and who took pos­ses­sion of them af­ter they were hand­ed over.

Tues­day’s in­ci­dent comes al­most four months af­ter the ar­moury at the San Fer­nan­do Mu­nic­i­pal Po­lice Sta­tion was found emp­tied of arms and am­mu­ni­tion.

The emp­ty vault was dis­cov­ered on April 19, at the same time the body of Cpl Anus­ka Ever­s­ley was found in the sta­tion at King’s Wharf, La­dy Hailes Av­enue.

An au­top­sy re­vealed the 42-year-old moth­er of three was beat­en and stran­gled.

An au­dit un­der­tak­en by the TTPS to de­ter­mine how many firearms and am­mu­ni­tion were stolen dur­ing the heist re­mains ac­tive.

Fol­low­ing that in­ci­dent, mu­nic­i­pal po­lice of­fi­cers were in­struct­ed to lodge their firearms at po­lice sta­tions, as stricter se­cu­ri­ty mea­sures were put in place to en­sure ac­count­abil­i­ty.