Po­lice con­duct­ed an an­ti-crime op­er­a­tion in Point Fortin which tar­get­ed a man de­scribed by of­fi­cers as a pri­or­i­ty of­fend­er.

The TTPS, in a state­ment said on Jan­u­ary 15, 2025, be­tween 9 am and 1 pm, dur­ing the search of his premis­es on Pan­go­la Road, the fol­low­ing items were found and seized: 1 AR-15 ri­fle, sev­en rounds of 5.56mm am­mu­ni­tion with a mag­a­zine, 250 cannabis plants in a hy­dro­pon­ic grow lab. The op­er­a­tion was co-or­di­nat­ed by se­nior of­fi­cers and in­clud­ed mem­bers of the Point Fortin CID, SWDTF, and the charge room.

And two un­re­lat­ed po­lice ex­er­cis­es in Laven­tille and Ma­yaro have led to the re­cov­ery of a stolen car, the ar­rest of two peo­ple and the seizure of co­caine which oc­curred Tues­day and Wednes­day morn­ing.

In the most re­cent in­stance, of­fi­cers of the In­ter-Agency Task Force (IATF) re­ceived a re­port of a stolen ve­hi­cle found near Fort Pic­ton, Laven­tille, around 9.30 am on Wednes­day.

A team of of­fi­cers led by Cpl Ram­jat­tan vis­it­ed the scene and found the sil­ver Nis­san La­tio.

The back win­dow of the ve­hi­cle was smashed and the cen­tre con­sole miss­ing. The car was towed to the Besson Street Po­lice Sta­tion for fur­ther in­quiries.

A me­dia re­lease stat­ed that po­lice of­fi­cers in the East­ern Di­vi­sion staged ex­er­cis­es in ar­eas iden­ti­fied as “pri­or­i­ty lo­ca­tions” such as Edric Con­nor Park, Guayagua­yare Fish­ing Port, Mafek­ing Vil­lage and Grand La­goon Vil­lage.

Dur­ing their ex­er­cise, of­fi­cers ar­rest­ed two peo­ple for of­fences in­clud­ing pos­ses­sion of co­caine for the pur­pose of traf­fick­ing, as­sem­bling for the pur­pose of gam­bling, re­sist­ing ar­rest, as­sault­ing po­lice of­fi­cers and us­ing ob­scene lan­guage.

The me­dia re­lease al­so stat­ed that war­rants will be is­sued for a third sus­pect who es­caped po­lice cus­tody and who is al­so want­ed for sev­er­al of­fences.

TTPS: WASA con­sta­bles, not po­lice of­fi­cers in road­side fight

Mean­while, Cen­tral Di­vi­sion po­lice of­fi­cers have de­nied that any of their of­fi­cers were in­volved in a road­side fight in Cou­va yes­ter­day.

A 47-sec­ond-long video that sur­faced on so­cial me­dia was shared with the cap­tion “Po­lice Of­fi­cers Stop to Fight Each Oth­er.”

The video showed two men clad in dark-coloured uni­forms fight­ing at the side of the road, as cars drove near­by.

Dur­ing the fra­cas, the men were sep­a­rat­ed by a woman po­lice of­fi­cer who in­ter­vened.

How­ev­er, when con­tact­ed for com­ment, one se­nior of­fi­cer said ini­tial in­for­ma­tion sug­gest­ed the fight was not be­tween po­lice of­fi­cers, but es­tate con­sta­bles from the Wa­ter and Sew­er­age Au­thor­i­ty (WASA).

The se­nior of­fi­cer added that a TTPS woman po­lice of­fi­cer at­tempt­ed to sep­a­rate both men.

Cen­tral Di­vi­sion po­lice said they were in­ves­ti­gat­ing the in­ci­dent.

Guardian Me­dia al­so con­tact­ed an of­fi­cial from the WASA cor­po­rate com­mu­ni­ca­tions de­part­ment who con­firmed that they were aware of the video and in the process of in­ves­ti­gat­ing.

Con­tact­ed for com­ment, pres­i­dent of the Es­tate Po­lice As­so­ci­a­tion (EPA) Deryck Richard­son said while the in­ci­dent was un­for­tu­nate, he was grate­ful that one of the col­leagues of the of­fi­cers ap­peared to be try­ing to de-es­ca­late the sit­u­a­tion.

Richard­son urged se­cu­ri­ty of­fi­cers and es­tate con­sta­bles to be mind­ful when they are out in pub­lic. —Shane Su­perville