Weed seizure in Point Fortin valued at $56M

An in­tel­li­gence-led op­er­a­tion in Point Fortin has re­sult­ed in the seizure of an es­ti­mat­ed TT$56 mil­lion worth of cannabis – the sec­ond ma­jor drug bust by the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice (TTPS) in the space of 24 hours.

It comes hours af­ter the TTPS re­cov­ered 1,560 kilo­grammes of “creepy mar­i­jua­na” with an es­ti­mat­ed street val­ue of $171,205,320 in the Ca­roni Swamp on Wednes­day night.

Ac­cord­ing to the TTPS, the lat­est ex­er­cise took place on Thurs­day be­tween 4:30 pm and 8:30 pm. The op­er­a­tion was led by Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice Al­lis­ter Gue­var­ro. Dur­ing the op­er­a­tion, of­fi­cers pro­ceed­ed to a re­mote forest­ed lo­ca­tion off South Cen­tral Road, Cap-De-Ville, Point Fortin. A search of the area led to the dis­cov­ery of 23 bales of cannabis. The pack­ages were found wrapped in black plas­tic.

Gue­var­ro com­mend­ed the of­fi­cers and part­ner agen­cies, not­ing what he de­scribed as the con­tin­ued ef­fort to lim­it the move­ment of il­le­gal nar­cotics. He said the im­pact of such seizures was not lim­it­ed to mon­e­tary val­ue but ex­tend­ed to the pro­tec­tion of lives af­fect­ed by drug-re­lat­ed ac­tiv­i­ty. He added that the TTPS would con­tin­ue to fo­cus on re­duc­ing op­por­tu­ni­ties for crim­i­nal groups to prof­it from il­le­gal op­er­a­tions and would pur­sue strate­gies aimed at dis­man­tling the net­works in­volved.

The TTPS stat­ed that op­er­a­tions of this na­ture form part of its wider strat­e­gy to re­duce se­ri­ous crime while ap­ply­ing con­tin­u­ous pres­sure on drug traf­fick­ing net­works. The or­gan­i­sa­tion said it re­mains fo­cused on in­tel­li­gence-dri­ven ex­er­cis­es in dis­tricts across the coun­try, with pri­or­i­ty placed on iden­ti­fy­ing and dis­rupt­ing il­le­gal drug ac­tiv­i­ties.

The seizure in Point Fortin rep­re­sents one of the lat­est ac­tions in the TTPS’ on­go­ing an­ti-crime ef­forts. The in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­to the ori­gin of the 23 bales of cannabis and the in­di­vid­u­als linked to their trans­port or stor­age is con­tin­u­ing un­der the di­rec­tion of the Spe­cial In­ves­ti­ga­tions Unit.