UNC says no to gun squad

THE OPPOSITION United National Congress (UNC) rejected calls for Government to form a firearms interdiction unit within the Police Service to stem the tide of illegal weapons coming into Trinidad and Tobago.  Party chairman Wade Mark said such a unit would be useless, and claimed that the People’s National Movement (PNM) was actively involved in arms smuggling while the UNC was in government.

Commenting yesterday on reports that the formation of this unit would be considered at the June 28 Caricom Heads of Government Summit in Jamaica, Mark said a police firearms interdiction unit would be pointless because the Manning Adminis-tration remains in bed with the nation’s criminal elements. Mark said while the UNC was in government, guns were entering the country and the then Opposition PNM was aware of all the drop zones for those weapons. He further alleged that a deal had been struck between the PNM and criminal forces to stage a coup in the country if the UNC won the last general election.

Mark wondered whether the PNM was deliberately running down the Coast Guard’s naval and air wings to give arms smugglers free rein to carry out their nefarious trade. He claimed that under the UNC, the country’s national security agencies were fully operational. The UNC chairman warned there will be “more bullets for young people in this country” until the PNM “publicly dissociates itself” from its alleged criminal partners. Mark reiterated the Opposition’s condemnation of the Kidnapping Bill and other anti-crime legislation being proposed by Government. He declared that Government needs to find “the political will” and “not more laws” to deal with crime. Speaking during debate in the Senate on the Kidnapping Bill on Tuesday, Mark alleged there was a death squad operating within the Police Service. National Security Minister Howard Chin Lee said Mark’s claims were nothing but melodrama, and revealed that police have solved half of the kidnapping cases to date. Four agents from the Federal Bureau of Investigations (FBI) are currently in Trinidad training members of the Anti-Kidnapping Squad.