Operation Blast nets traffic offenders, firearm

Ralph Ban­warie

Mo­torists were charged with traf­fic of­fences and sus­pect­ed mar­i­jua­na, a firearm and am­mu­ni­tion were seized dur­ing a four-hour po­lice ex­er­cise across three di­vi­sions on Thurs­day.

The ex­er­cise, dubbed Op­er­a­tion Blast, was con­duct­ed be­tween 9 am and 1 pm in the West­ern, Port of Spain and East­ern di­vi­sions.

Of­fi­cers in­ter­cept­ed a sil­ver Mit­subishi Lancer on the east­bound lane of the Churchill-Roo­sevelt High­way, near Lifestyle Mo­tors, af­ter the dri­ver was un­able to pro­duce his dri­ving doc­u­ments. The dri­ver was ar­rest­ed and tak­en to the Barataria Po­lice Sta­tion for fur­ther pro­cess­ing.

Dur­ing the ex­er­cise, of­fi­cers al­so act­ed on in­for­ma­tion from an anony­mous in­for­mant and searched an area known as The Gaza at Sa­van­nah No. 1.

They found a black bag con­cealed be­neath de­bris near an or­ange traf­fic cone. The bag con­tained ap­prox­i­mate­ly 610 grammes of plant-like ma­te­r­i­al sus­pect­ed to be mar­i­jua­na, a black met­al ob­ject re­sem­bling a firearm and a mag­a­zine con­tain­ing eight ob­jects sus­pect­ed to be live am­mu­ni­tion.

No ar­rests were made in con­nec­tion with the seizure.

The ex­er­cise al­so tar­get­ed mo­torists for ex­ceed­ing the speed lim­it, fail­ing to wear seat belts, il­le­gal win­dow tint, ex­pired or ab­sent ve­hi­cle in­spec­tion cer­tifi­cates, de­fec­tive ve­hi­cle fit­tings and dri­ving with­out in­sur­ance.

The op­er­a­tion in­volved of­fi­cers from the E999 Emer­gency Re­sponse Unit, Guard and Emer­gency Branch, In­ter-Agency Task Force, Traf­fic Branch, Air Sup­port Unit and Li­cens­ing Di­vi­sion.

Po­lice de­scribed the ex­er­cise as in­ci­dent-free.