Suspect arrested after Customs finds firearm in washer and dryer

The Cus­toms and Ex­cise Di­vi­sion in­ter­cept­ed a ship­ment con­tain­ing mar­i­jua­na and a firearm dur­ing an in­tel­li­gence-led op­er­a­tion at a Cus­toms Bond­ed Area in Port of Spain on Mon­day.

Ac­cord­ing to a Min­istry of Fi­nance me­dia re­lease, of­fi­cers con­duct­ed a de­tailed ex­am­i­na­tion of car­go con­signed to a re­tired Cus­toms and Ex­cise Guard and dis­cov­ered 11 pack­ages con­tain­ing a green plant-like sub­stance be­lieved to be mar­i­jua­na, with an es­ti­mat­ed street val­ue of $1.4 mil­lion.

Of­fi­cers al­so found a sep­a­rate pack­age con­tain­ing a black metal­lic ob­ject re­sem­bling a firearm con­cealed in­side a wash­er and dry­er.

The re­lease said of­fi­cers at­tached to the Cus­toms Ca­nine En­force­ment Unit and Pre­ven­tive Branch im­me­di­ate­ly se­cured and seized the pro­hib­it­ed items.

The Firearms Traf­fick­ing In­ter­dic­tion Unit and Spe­cial In­ves­ti­ga­tions Unit of the Trinidad and To­ba­go Po­lice Ser­vice as­sist­ed with the in­ves­ti­ga­tion.

As a re­sult of the in­ves­ti­ga­tion, of­fi­cers ar­rest­ed and for­mal­ly charged one per­son in con­nec­tion with the seizure. The ac­cused is ex­pect­ed to ap­pear be­fore a Mas­ter of the High Court to­day to an­swer charges un­der the Cus­toms Act Chap­ter 78:01.

The min­istry said the seizure demon­strates the di­vi­sion’s con­tin­ued ef­forts to pre­vent the im­por­ta­tion of pro­hib­it­ed goods, il­le­gal nar­cotics and items that threat­en na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty and pub­lic safe­ty.

The re­lease added that the Cus­toms and Ex­cise Di­vi­sion re­mains com­mit­ted to work­ing with agen­cies across the na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty net­work to com­bat transna­tion­al crime, dis­rupt il­lic­it traf­fick­ing net­works and en­force the laws of Trinidad and To­ba­go.

It al­so reaf­firmed the di­vi­sion’s com­mit­ment to pro­tect­ing na­tion­al rev­enue, se­cur­ing the coun­try’s bor­ders and main­tain­ing high stan­dards of pro­fes­sion­al­ism, ac­count­abil­i­ty and in­tegri­ty.