Supermarket security guards arrested with illegal firearms

Three men, in­clud­ing two su­per­mar­ket se­cu­ri­ty guards, were ar­rest­ed af­ter po­lice al­leged­ly found them in pos­ses­sion of il­le­gal firearms dur­ing an­ti-crime op­er­a­tions in south Trinidad on Wednes­day.

Ac­cord­ing to the Trinidad and To­ba­go Po­lice Ser­vice (TTPS), of­fi­cers car­ried out the ex­er­cise af­ter re­ceiv­ing in­tel­li­gence about il­le­gal firearms in the South West­ern Di­vi­sion.

Around 3.20 p.m., of­fi­cers went to a su­per­mar­ket in La Brea where they iden­ti­fied them­selves to a male se­cu­ri­ty of­fi­cer be­fore con­duct­ing a search. Po­lice said they found a firearm tucked in­to the man’s pants. The weapon was seized and the se­cu­ri­ty guard was ar­rest­ed.

Po­lice lat­er con­duct­ed a sim­i­lar op­er­a­tion at an­oth­er su­per­mar­ket in Pep­per Vil­lage, Fyz­abad. Of­fi­cers iden­ti­fied them­selves to a male se­cu­ri­ty of­fi­cer and searched him, al­leged­ly dis­cov­er­ing an­oth­er firearm con­cealed in his pants. He was ar­rest­ed and the firearm seized.

Lat­er that evening, at about 8.45 p.m., of­fi­cers act­ing on fur­ther in­tel­li­gence in­ter­cept­ed a 39-year-old mo­tor­cy­clist trav­el­ling north along the Sir Solomon Ho­choy High­way.

Po­lice said they searched the man and found a firearm in­side a black bag. The weapon was fit­ted with a mag­a­zine con­tain­ing two rounds of 9mm am­mu­ni­tion.

The sus­pect was cau­tioned and ar­rest­ed.

The TTPS said the three ar­rests formed part of on­go­ing an­ti-crime op­er­a­tions aimed at re­mov­ing il­le­gal firearms from the streets and dis­rupt­ing crim­i­nal ac­tiv­i­ty in com­mu­ni­ties across the South West­ern Di­vi­sion.

The seized firearms are ex­pect­ed to un­der­go fur­ther foren­sic ex­am­i­na­tion as in­ves­ti­ga­tors con­tin­ue en­quiries in­to their ori­gin and whether they may be linked to oth­er crim­i­nal of­fences.

Po­lice have not re­leased the iden­ti­ties of the three sus­pects. Charges are ex­pect­ed to be de­ter­mined fol­low­ing ad­vice from the Of­fice of the Di­rec­tor of Pub­lic Pros­e­cu­tions and the com­ple­tion of in­ves­ti­ga­tions.