Trinidad hosting five-day regional firearms trafficking workshop

A se­nior Unit­ed States of­fi­cial Mon­day said op­er­a­tional suc­cess­es re­quire sus­tained in­tel­li­gence shar­ing, tech­ni­cal ex­per­tise, and the kind of trust that on­ly comes from work­ing side-by-side over time.

Ad­dress­ing the five-day re­gion­al work­shop joint­ly fa­cil­i­tat­ed by the Caribbean Com­mu­ni­ty (CARI­COM) Im­ple­men­ta­tion Agency for Crime and Se­cu­ri­ty (IM­PACS) and the US State De­part­ment’s Bu­reau of In­ter­na­tion­al Nar­cotics and Law En­force­ment Af­fairs (INL),

Chargé d’Af­faires of the US Em­bassy in T&T, Michael Fitz­patrick, urged par­tic­i­pants in a firearms traf­fick­ing work­shop to make the most of net­work­ing and joint train­ing ex­pe­ri­ences to bet­ter ad­dress gun crime in the re­gion.

“Op­er­a­tional suc­cess­es re­quire sus­tained in­tel­li­gence shar­ing, tech­ni­cal ex­per­tise, and the kind of trust that on­ly comes from work­ing side-by-side over time. This work­shop is about op­er­a­tional­is­ing what we know and en­sur­ing that when the next ship­ment ar­rives, when the next net­work emerges, we are ready.”

He said that over the next five days, the par­tic­i­pants “will learn about emerg­ing threats and how to de­feat them.

“You will build on re­gion­al col­lab­o­ra­tion on all as­pects of the in­ves­ti­ga­tion and pros­e­cu­tion process­es. Make the most of it. Make the most of each oth­er.

“De­feat­ing them re­quires ex­act­ly what we see in this room. Pro­fes­sion­als who un­der­stand trac­ing, who know how to build pros­e­cutable cas­es, and who can pick up the phone and reach a trust­ed coun­ter­part in an­oth­er coun­try,” he added..

Trinidad and To­ba­go De­fence Min­is­ters, Wayne Sturge said that the firearms cri­sis and the dis­tinc­tion mat­ters “be­cause prob­lems can be man­aged in­cre­men­tal­ly, while crises de­mand a very dif­fer­ent type and qual­i­ty of re­sponse.

“It is that qual­i­ty of re­sponse which brings us here to­day. The il­le­gal traf­fick­ing of firearms con­tin­ues to be the en­gine be­hind gang vi­o­lence, or­gan­ised crim­i­nal net­works and se­ri­ous vi­o­lent crime across our re­gion.

“What was once treat­ed as a do­mes­tic law en­force­ment chal­lenge has be­come some­thing far more com­plex, transna­tion­al in reach, adap­tive in method and in­creas­ing­ly so­phis­ti­cat­ed in use of tech­nol­o­gy,” Sturge told the par­tic­i­pants.

Sturge said co­op­er­a­tion is vi­tal re­quir­ing al­so in­tel­li­gence, in­no­va­tion, and strong part­ner­ships. He said through col­lab­o­ra­tion and ca­pac­i­ty build­ing, the gov­ern­ment con­tin­ues to strength­en the se­cu­ri­ty ar­chi­tec­ture of Trinidad and To­ba­go and the wider Caribbean re­gion.

Sturge said this work­shop brings to­geth­er re­gion­al and in­ter­na­tion­al stake­hold­ers to strength­en the col­lec­tive re­sponse to il­lic­it firearms traf­fick­ing, transna­tion­al or­gan­ised crime, and emerg­ing se­cu­ri­ty threats, and com­mend­ed CARI­COM IM­PACS and all par­tic­i­pat­ing agen­cies for their com­mit­ment to ad­vanc­ing re­gion­al se­cu­ri­ty and build­ing safer com­mu­ni­ties for cit­i­zens. —PORT OF SPAIN, Trinidad (CMC)