Two days of “in­tense” polic­ing saw 138 peo­ple ar­rest­ed by po­lice over the week­end. In the ex­er­cise which start­ed on Fri­day at 6 am, which saw 22 drug blocks be­ing searched, eight guns, as well as a va­ri­ety of am­mu­ni­tion, were seized.

Po­lice said 13 pro­hib­it­ed im­mi­grants were al­so de­tained and quan­ti­ties of drugs were al­so seized as well as two stolen ve­hi­cles re­cov­ered, a state­ment from the Po­lice Ser­vice said. The ex­er­cise, the first roll of out of Com­mis­sion­er Gary Grif­fith’s Op­er­a­tion Strike Back for 2019 start­ed just four days af­ter the Com­mis­sion­er was hos­pi­talised and or­dered to rest. He spear­head­ed the op­er­a­tion which took place in all nine polic­ing di­vi­sions across the coun­try. He said the coun­try re­quired such an ex­er­cise.

“There were a num­ber of dif­fer­ent things we can look at to show the ben­e­fit of this op­er­a­tion over the last 48 hours. It showed high vis­i­bil­i­ty, it was a pow­er­ful de­ter­rent and we ba­si­cal­ly lock down the coun­try,” said Com­mis­sion­er Grif­fith while ad­dress­ing mem­bers of the me­dia short­ly af­ter 6 am at the St James Po­lice Bar­racks yesterday. He spoke while sur­round­ed by se­nior of­fi­cers of the Trinidad and To­ba­go Po­lice Ser­vice in­clud­ing As­sis­tant Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice (Crime) Jayson Forde, ACP (South) Joanne Archie, Se­nior Su­per­in­ten­dent (Port-of-Spain) Floris Hodge-Grif­fith, Se­nior Su­per­in­ten­dent Michael Daniel of the North­ern Di­vi­sion and Se­nior Su­per­in­ten­dent Pe­ter Dom­inque of the West­ern Di­vi­sion.(Trinidad Guardian)…[+]