Sturge sounds alarm over regional ‘firearms crisis’

SHANE SU­PERVILLE

Se­nior Re­porter

De­fence Min­is­ter Wayne Sturge has en­dorsed con­tin­ued ef­forts to strength­en law en­force­ment part­ner­ships across the re­gion as he out­lined the threat posed by il­le­gal gun traf­fick­ing in the Caribbean.

Sturge made the re­marks dur­ing his fea­ture ad­dress at the launch of a work­shop on firearms traf­fick­ing, joint­ly fa­cil­i­tat­ed by Cari­com IM­PACS and the US De­part­ment of State's Bu­reau of In­ter­na­tion­al Nar­cotics and Law En­force­ment Af­fairs (INL) at the Court­yard Mar­riott Ho­tel, In­vaders' Bay, Port of Spain, on Mon­day morn­ing.

Sturge de­scribed the chal­lenge as a "firearms cri­sis," rather than a "prob­lem," not­ing that the scale of in­ter­ven­tion re­quired to ad­dress a cri­sis was more sig­nif­i­cant.

He, who was re­port­ed this week­end as say­ing the on­go­ing State of Emer­gency (SoE) would con­tin­ue un­til the de­sired re­duc­tions in crime were achieved, said the in­flux of firearms was a dri­ver be­hind gang vi­o­lence.

Sturge said the scale and com­plex­i­ty of gun traf­fick­ing re­quired sup­port from lo­cal and re­gion­al law en­force­ment agen­cies, while rais­ing con­cerns about 3-D print­ed "ghost guns" and stress­ing the need for sim­i­lar­ly adap­tive law en­force­ment strate­gies.

He was un­able to ac­cept ques­tions from the me­dia as he left the fo­rum short­ly af­ter his ad­dress due to oth­er en­gage­ments, ac­cord­ing to the Mas­ter of Cer­e­monies.

Dur­ing his re­marks, Charge d'Af­faires for the US Em­bassy Michael Fitz­patrick urged par­tic­i­pants to make the most of the net­work­ing op­por­tu­ni­ties and skill ex­changes avail­able over the next five days, as he stressed the im­por­tance of build­ing re­gion­al net­works fo­cused on the lat­est gun traf­fick­ing trends.

Fitz­patrick ac­knowl­edged that while there were no firearms man­u­fac­tur­ers in the re­gion, gun crimes con­tin­ued to be a chal­lenge con­fronting the Caribbean.

He re­ferred to the US gov­ern­ment's com­mit­ment to in­ter­dict­ing gun ship­ments, cit­ing past in­ci­dents where T&T cit­i­zens have been ar­rest­ed, ex­tra­dit­ed and charged with be­ing part of or­gan­ised crime net­works in­volved in gun traf­fick­ing.

The event al­so served as a han­dover cer­e­mo­ny of a bul­let catch­er and IBIS Brasstrax firearm trac­ing soft­ware to St Vin­cent and the Grenadines' Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter St Clair Lea­cock, who was present.

Guardian Me­dia Ltd was told that none of the par­tic­i­pants was avail­able for in­ter­views as they were moved to the be­gin­ning of the work­shop due to a "com­pressed sched­ule" in the day's events.