PM, police vow wider crackdown as $1.68B in narcotics destroyed

Shane Su­perville

Se­nior Re­porter

shane.su­[email protected]

As lo­cal and in­ter­na­tion­al au­thor­i­ties con­tin­ue to fo­cus ef­forts on dis­man­tling drug traf­fick­ing net­works, Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar and the Trinidad and To­ba­go Po­lice Ser­vice (TTPS) say get­ting nar­cotics off the street is just one part of wider strate­gies to tack­le the il­lic­it trade.

An­oth­er key el­e­ment in­cludes fol­low­ing the funds gen­er­at­ed by the drug trade, which Per­sad-Bisses­sar says is al­ready un­der­way by lo­cal au­thor­i­ties and their in­ter­na­tion­al coun­ter­parts.

Per­sad-Bisses­sar made the re­marks on her of­fi­cial Face­book ac­count yes­ter­day, hours af­ter of­fi­cers from the Spe­cial In­ves­ti­ga­tions Unit (SIU), su­per­vised by Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Al­lis­ter Gue­var­ro, de­stroyed an es­ti­mat­ed $1.68 bil­lion worth of as­sort­ed drugs at the Ca­roni Cre­ma­tion Site.

In her post, Per­sad-Bisses­sar com­mend­ed the au­thor­i­ties for their work, not­ing that the cash val­ue of the drugs de­stroyed rep­re­sent­ed an es­ti­mat­ed one per cent of T&T’s an­nu­al GDP (gross do­mes­tic prod­uct), as she em­pha­sised the lu­cra­tive na­ture of the drug trade.

She added that “lo­cal drug mafia” would face con­tin­ued pres­sure from the au­thor­i­ties on mul­ti­ple fronts.

“Not on­ly are we go­ing af­ter their phys­i­cal ship­ments of drugs, we are al­so dis­plac­ing their ac­com­plices in our fi­nan­cial in­sti­tu­tions, dis­tri­b­u­tion net­works and pub­lic sec­tor with the help of in­ter­na­tion­al law en­force­ment.”

Per­sad-Bisses­sar al­so ac­cused the Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM) of al­low­ing these net­works to “run ram­pant” dur­ing their suc­ces­sive ad­min­is­tra­tions.

“The lo­cal drug mafia that got so much un­der the PNM’s time in of­fice is over.”

Ad­dress­ing re­porters at the cre­ma­tion site yes­ter­day, Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Al­lis­ter Gue­var­ro al­so stressed the role of drugs in fu­elling vi­o­lent crime.

“The mere fact that we’re able to de­stroy $1.68 bil­lion worth of nar­cotics here for the world to see means that it’s a lot of nar­cotics that isn’t mak­ing it in­to the hands of our chil­dren, a lot of nar­cotics that is not be­ing sold to fu­el gang vi­o­lence against our cit­i­zens,” he said.

While a spe­cif­ic break­down of the types of drugs was not avail­able in de­tail, Gue­var­ro said the nar­cotics de­stroyed in­clud­ed mar­i­jua­na, co­caine and syn­thet­ic drugs like ec­sta­sy, which were rel­a­tive­ly new ad­di­tions to the lo­cal drug mar­ket.

Ac­cord­ing to da­ta com­piled by the TTPS Crime and Prob­lem Analy­sis branch, an es­ti­mat­ed 211.87 kilo­grammes of co­caine were seized in 2025 com­pared to 92 kilo­grammes in 2024 and 237.67 kilo­grammes in 2023.

Re­spond­ing to the rel­a­tive­ly sharp in­crease in co­caine be­tween 2024 and 2025, Gue­var­ro said such sta­tis­tics were a pos­i­tive in­di­ca­tor of po­lice ac­tiv­i­ty.

“We have more be­ing seized; that means that the op­er­a­tions the po­lice are car­ry­ing out are more suc­cess­ful in re­mov­ing it from the streets.

“Yes­ter­day (Mon­day), there was an­oth­er suc­cess­ful op­er­a­tion by the Coast Guard dur­ing an in­ter­dic­tion, and very soon you may be see­ing those drugs be­ing de­stroyed as well.

“When those num­bers go up, it gives me plea­sure as head of the TTPS to re­alise that op­er­a­tions are work­ing.”

Head of the Crim­i­nal Di­vi­sion ACP Ker­win Fran­cis said in ad­di­tion to in­ter­cept­ing and con­fis­cat­ing drug ship­ments, an­oth­er el­e­ment of an­ti-drug ef­forts was fi­nan­cial in­ves­ti­ga­tions aimed at fol­low­ing the flow of funds gen­er­at­ed by the il­le­gal trade.

“Once there is a (fi­nan­cial) ben­e­fit, those mat­ters are tak­en be­fore the court so that we can have con­fis­ca­tion or­ders made, and while those fi­nan­cial in­ves­ti­ga­tions are go­ing on, we have the op­por­tu­ni­ty to re­strain prop­er­ty that can be for­feit­ed to the state, sold and the funds de­posit­ed to the seized as­sets fund.”

Da­ta pro­vid­ed by the TTPS showed that a to­tal of $5,676,710 was for­feit­ed be­tween Jan­u­ary 1, 2025 and Sep­tem­ber 17, 2025 from var­i­ous po­lice di­vi­sions.

When asked about the pro­lif­er­a­tion of syn­thet­ic drugs like ke­t­a­mine and fen­tanyl, Fran­cis said that while such nar­cotics were seized lo­cal­ly, they did not ap­pear to be con­sumed in large amounts.

He said the po­lice were mon­i­tor­ing drug pat­terns and would take steps to ad­dress it if it showed wide­spread us­age.

“We have not seen a large in­flux of that drug hit­ting the mar­ket, but be­cause we have our on­go­ing mon­i­tor­ing sys­tems, we are keep­ing a close eye on that de­vel­op­ment, and once there’s a need for a greater in­ter­ven­tion, we will sure­ly en­gage the pol­i­cy-mak­ers so that we can put those leg­isla­tive mech­a­nisms in place to curb the use of that par­tic­u­lar dan­ger­ous drugs.”

He not­ed that giv­en T&T’s land­scape as an is­land, coastal di­vi­sions such as the North East­ern Di­vi­sion, the East­ern Di­vi­sion and the South-West­ern Di­vi­sion were “prone” to drug traf­fick­ing.

Gon­za­les hits back

at PM for blame

Re­spond­ing to Guardian Me­dia’s ques­tions via What­sApp yes­ter­day, chair­man of the PNM and for­mer na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty min­is­ter Mar­vin Gon­za­les de­scribed the Prime Min­is­ter’s ac­cu­sa­tions to­wards his par­ty as a “sa­tan­ic lie,” not­ing that she could not claim re­spon­si­bil­i­ty for drugs that were seized by po­lice, us­ing in­tel­li­gence ob­tained years pri­or.

“These drugs were re­port­ed­ly ac­cu­mu­lat­ed from seizures dat­ing back to March 2005. That means a sub­stan­tial por­tion—quite pos­si­bly the over­whelm­ing ma­jor­i­ty—was seized while the PNM was in gov­ern­ment be­tween March 2005 and April 2025.”

He al­so ques­tioned the UNC’s abil­i­ty to ef­fec­tive­ly con­front drug traf­fick­ing and ac­cused her of at­tempt­ing to weave her own nar­ra­tive.

“The de­struc­tion of these drugs is a cred­it to the po­lice of­fi­cers and oth­er law en­force­ment per­son­nel re­spon­si­ble for the seizures—many of which oc­curred un­der the for­mer PNM Gov­ern­ment. It is not a po­lit­i­cal tro­phy for the Prime Min­is­ter.

“Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar can­not rewrite four years of seizures, erase her own dis­as­trous na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty record and man­u­fac­ture po­lit­i­cal suc­cess from one cre­ma­tion ex­er­cise.

“The dates mat­ter. The facts mat­ter. And the coun­try re­mem­bers. It is time to burn and cre­mate the dai­ly tis­sues of lies that emerge from the tongue of the Prime Min­is­ter.”