Firearms expert values stolen police arsenal at $650,000

SHAL­IZA HAS­SANALI

Se­nior Re­porter

shal­iza.has­[email protected]

Law en­force­ment con­sul­tant and firearms ex­pert Paul Daniel Na­hous has es­ti­mat­ed the 62 firearms and over 4,000 rounds of am­mu­ni­tion be­lieved to be stolen from the San Fer­nan­do Mu­nic­i­pal Po­lice Sta­tion are val­ued at $650,000.

The weapons-52 Glock pis­tols, six shot­guns, four MPX-type firearms and more than 4,000 rounds of 9mm am­mu­ni­tion were tak­en from the sta­tion fol­low­ing the mur­der of act­ing Cpl Anush­ka Ever­s­ley yes­ter­day. Ever­s­ley was at­tached to the T&T Mu­nic­i­pal Po­lice Ser­vice (TTMPS).

Giv­ing a break­down of the weapons, Na­hous said the cost of the 52 Glock pis­tols could col­lec­tive­ly cost $390,000.

The Glock 19 pis­tol is a se­mi-au­to­mat­ic weapon used by law en­force­ment.

It is a com­pact 9mm pis­tol known for its wide­spread use among po­lice agen­cies world­wide.

The oth­er weapons and am­mu­ni­tion were es­ti­mat­ed by Na­hous at $260,000.

The MPX is a 9 mm sub­ma­chine gun-style weapon used pri­mar­i­ly in law en­force­ment and se­cu­ri­ty op­er­a­tions, de­signed for low re­coil and rapid en­gage­ment.

“So in to­tal, we’re look­ing at ap­prox­i­mate­ly $650,000 in gov­ern­ment prop­er­ty that was stolen.”

Na­hous said the shot­guns could be pump-ac­tion or se­mi-au­to­mat­ic.

Of the three types of firearms stolen, Na­hous said the most dan­ger­ous would be the MPXs.

“The MPXs would al­low the crim­i­nals to be more ef­fec­tive from fur­ther dis­tances with more ve­loc­i­ty.”

He said it was wor­ry­ing that such a brazen mur­der had tak­en place in a po­lice sta­tion and a large cache of guns and am­mu­ni­tion stolen by crim­i­nals dur­ing a State of Emer­gency.

He said these weapons wouldn’t all be marked as TTMPS.

“It’s trou­bling that this stock­pile could now be in the hands of crim­i­nals, es­pe­cial­ly as they are new and ef­fi­cient weapons. Crim­i­nals have been be­com­ing bold­er over time, bet­ter armed, and more am­bi­tious.”

Na­hous said each po­lice sta­tion needs to be ex­am­ined on an in­di­vid­ual ba­sis, and firearms and am­mu­ni­tion stored needs to be bal­anced with needs, phys­i­cal stor­age con­cerns and the man­pow­er avail­able to pro­tect them.

“I would have done this type of as­sess­ment for the TTPS across the ma­jor­i­ty of di­vi­sions in T&T in 2020.”

In 2020/2021, some ac­tion was tak­en to safe­guard “where was need­ed, in­clud­ing train­ing rec­om­men­da­tions.”

The gun ex­pert opt­ed not to pro­vide de­tails of the na­ture of this ex­er­cise.

How­ev­er, he said these ini­tia­tives were scrapped months lat­er by a sub­se­quent com­mis­sion­er of po­lice.

Na­hous said oth­er than the cul­prit/s be­ing caught, “the on­ly ho­n­our to Ms Everse­ly would be to en­sure that things are put in place so that this kind of in­ci­dent nev­er hap­pens again.”