Over 3,000 illicit goods seized during multi-agency operation

A co­or­di­nat­ed mul­ti-agency an­ti-il­lic­it trade ex­er­cise, dubbed Op­er­a­tion DUN­WICH, re­sult­ed in the seizure of over 3,000 il­lic­it and un­cer­ti­fied items dur­ing in­spec­tions con­duct­ed across the South­ern and South West­ern Di­vi­sions on Fri­day, May 22.

In a state­ment is­sued, the TTPS said the op­er­a­tion tar­get­ed the sale and dis­tri­b­u­tion of il­lic­it goods to mem­bers of the pub­lic, while si­mul­ta­ne­ous­ly en­forc­ing com­pli­ance with phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal, trade­mark, con­sumer, fire, health, and safe­ty reg­u­la­tions.

The ex­er­cise yield­ed the fol­low­ing seizures: 1,620 il­lic­it cig­a­rettes, 386 coun­ter­feit brand-name cloth­ing items, 689 un­cer­ti­fied elec­tri­cal and as­sort­ed con­sumer prod­ucts and 318 un­reg­is­tered male en­hance­ment phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal items.

At a phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal es­tab­lish­ment in Debe, no il­lic­it items were dis­cov­ered. How­ev­er, of­fi­cers iden­ti­fied 10 breach­es re­lat­ing to fire and life safe­ty, elec­tri­cal main­te­nance, and gen­er­al house­keep­ing. The pro­pri­etor was ad­vised to ad­dress these de­fi­cien­cies with­in the stip­u­lat­ed time­frame.

At a sec­ond lo­ca­tion in South Oropouche, a su­per­mar­ket was found to be in pos­ses­sion of mul­ti­ple il­lic­it and un­cer­ti­fied items, which were sub­se­quent­ly seized. These in­clud­ed to­bac­co prod­ucts not li­cenced for sale in Trinidad and To­ba­go, coun­ter­feit cloth­ing bear­ing trade­marked lo­gos, un­cer­ti­fied elec­tri­cal items such as ex­ten­sion cords, cell­phone charg­ers, and LED dec­o­ra­tive string lights, as well as un­reg­is­tered phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal and sup­ple­ment prod­ucts.

Po­lice said a to­tal of 18 fire, elec­tri­cal, health, and safe­ty breach­es were iden­ti­fied at the su­per­mar­ket. These in­clud­ed blocked emer­gency ex­its, im­prop­er place­ment of fire ex­tin­guish­ers, and poor house­keep­ing prac­tices.

In­ves­ti­ga­tors al­so ob­tained in­for­ma­tion that is ex­pect­ed to as­sist in iden­ti­fy­ing the dis­trib­u­tors and sup­pli­ers of the il­lic­it prod­ucts.

The op­er­a­tion was ex­e­cut­ed through an all-of-gov­ern­ment ap­proach, in­volv­ing of­fi­cers of the Trinidad and To­ba­go Po­lice Ser­vice (TTPS) and Mul­ti-Agency Task Force un­der the su­per­vi­sion of DCP In­tel­li­gence and In­ves­ti­ga­tion Natasha George, with the sup­port of rep­re­sen­ta­tives of the Chem­istry, Food and Drugs Di­vi­sion, Cus­toms and Ex­cise Di­vi­sion, Trinidad and To­ba­go Bu­reau of Stan­dards, OS­HA Di­vi­sion, Fire Pre­ven­tion Di­vi­sion, and the Gov­ern­ment Elec­tri­cal In­spec­torate.