The Po­lice Ser­vice (TTPS) and Crime Stop­pers T&T (CSTT) are hop­ing to re­cov­er at least 100 il­le­gal guns be­fore the State of Emer­gency (SoE) ends on April 13.

They hope in­creas­ing the cash re­wards un­der the Il­le­gal Gun Re­moval Pro­gramme will com­pel cit­i­zens to re­port where il­lic­it weapons can be found in a bid to reach the tar­get.

Speak­ing dur­ing the TTPS me­dia brief­ing at the Po­lice Ad­min­is­tra­tion Build­ing in Port-of-Spain yes­ter­day, act­ing Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice (CoP) Ju­nior Ben­jamin said they had man­aged to re­cov­er over 165 il­le­gal weapons since the SoE start­ed on De­cem­ber 30, 2024.

How­ev­er, Ben­jamin said, “Even though we had some mea­sure of suc­cess, there is far more need­ed for us to get out there and to get more firearms off the streets.

“We are com­ing down to the end of the SoE and we are of the firm opin­ion that if we cap­i­talise on this, we can re­al­ly make a tremen­dous dent, even as we look in­to the wind­screen of our fu­ture in T&T, in terms of crime fight­ing.”

He in­di­cat­ed the part­ner­ship was well-timed and would help the au­thor­i­ties in the fight against crime.

Jok­ing that he was good at speak­ing things in­to be­ing, Ben­jamin said, “If I can get an­oth­er 100 off, that would be so awe­some.”

Deny­ing the pro­gramme was akin to a gun amnesty, of­fi­cials from the TTPS and the CSTT agreed there was a sense of ur­gency to get more il­le­gal weapons off the streets.

CSTT di­rec­tor Dar­rin Carmichael said the cash re­wards will be dou­bled from to­day un­til April 13 in a bid to con­vince the pub­lic to re­port il­le­gal weapons.

The of­fer, which ex­pires on April 13, boasts $4,000 for in­for­ma­tion hand­guns/pis­tols; $5,000 for shot­guns; and $7,000 for au­to­mat­ic/se­mi-au­to­mat­ic weapons.

Re­fer­ring to the cur­rent mur­der count, which stood at 94 up to mid­day yes­ter­day, com­pared to 131 in 2024 and 136 in 2023 for the com­pa­ra­ble pe­ri­ods, Ben­jamin said, “The time has come for us to look care­ful­ly at these homi­cides thus far.”

He said “at least 69 of those homi­cides were done with the use of firearms.”

“That is a very sig­nif­i­cant sta­tis­tic be­cause we recog­nise that the weapon of choice used in these homi­cides is ba­si­cal­ly that of the firearm.”

Echo­ing the sen­ti­ments ex­pressed by Ben­jamin, Carmichael said the CSTT had been in­stru­men­tal in re­mov­ing 462 il­le­gal firearms off the streets dur­ing the past 25 years—which he said man­aged to pre­vent count­less rob­beries, home in­va­sions, kid­nap­pings and even mur­ders.

He said while this of­fer was on­ly in ef­fect un­til April 13, the CSTT would have to look at its suc­cess to de­ter­mine if it can be ex­tend­ed.

Eleven-time Road March win­ner Machel Mon­tano en­dorsed the cam­paign by record­ing an ad­ver­tise­ment for CSTT, in which he urged cit­i­zens to pro­vide cru­cial in­for­ma­tion.