The guns killing us are flooding into Trinidad on hundreds of fishing boats manned by smugglers pretending to be sailors, a Sunday Express investigation has discovered.
By Richard Charan and Darryl HeeralalThe weapons are being bought and bartered in ragged towns and villages in Venezuela's Orinoco Delta region.
The easy flow of arms and ammunition into Venezuela from its border neighbours Colombia and Brazil is fuelling the trade.
And despite the new local radar systems in place, the Sunday Express was told there is still no way for the Coast Guard or police to detect what is being transferred from vessel to vessel when such transactions are picked up by radar.
Only a tiny fraction of the weapons are being found before the bandits buy them, sources in the protective services said.
Petty "five dollar" thieves, terrorists, gangsters, kidnappers, and businessmen end up with the rest.
It is impossible to say how well armed these groups are but police say that "thousands and thousands of guns" are now in circulation.
There will be little improvement in interdiction efforts even with enhanced coastline surveillance, law enforcement officers believe. Manpower, they say, is key to winning the battle.
While there is intelligence on the "players" involved in the gun trade, there are no resources to break the smuggling operations, according to investigators of the illegal arms trade.
This year so far, 146 handguns, assault rifles, grenades, shotguns and 1,517 rounds of ammunition have been seized by police.
The entire haul could have been brought in on a single pirogue making a round trip to Venezuela within two hours.
Investigations have unearthed a gun and drug trade that stretches from our south-western shores, through the Orinoco River delta in Venezuela to Colombia, Brazil and Guyana.
Some of the weapons that have been seized by police in the last seven months include the MAC 10 and 11, Uzi and M-26 grenade.
The proliferation of weapons in Brazil, which manufactures several of the guns are also killing Trinidadians.
They include Taurus revolvers, Smith and Wesson pistols and Colt handguns.
Some of the weapons, intelligence officers believe, are being sold second hand from the terrorist groups, while new guns are believed to originate from factories in Brazil.
Firearm interdiction intelligence suggests that Venezuela, our closest mainland neighbour is a "bridge" in the gun trade. Trinidad is a key extension of that bridge, they say.
Venezuelan Ambassador in Port of Spain, Hector Azocar, supports this view and says that smuggling between Trinidad and Venezuela is "not a new issue".
In fact Azocar says there is a historical link in gun trade between the countries as in the early 1800's the British smuggled firearms and gun powder to freedom fighters in Venezuela from Trinidad.
The Venezuelans were fighting the Spanish for independence.
"Venezuela is a bridge for drugs and weapons leaving the mainland from other Latin American countries close to Venezuela."
Azocar says the Hugo Chavez administration has a "strong attitude to policing trafficking routes" but admits that it is a difficult issue to effectively address.
The smuggling operation is centred in the Orinoco River delta and according to Azocar, the expansive mangroves, with countless inlets, and thick forests, make it almost impossible to detect and police illegal activity by air, land or sea.
The Orinoco River basin is at least ten times the size of Trinidad.
Asked whether he felt Venezuelan law enforcement, namely the Guardia Nacional, was involved in smuggling Azocar admitted there might be rogue officers, adding that this was not unique to Venezuela.
How easy is it?
There is a Customs and Immigration outpost at the Cedros Port.
On the compound is a Coast Guard station built to provide protection for vessels on Trinidad's south western peninsular.
Nearby is the police station meant to secure an area more than half the size of Tobago.
The traffickers ignore the port of entry, skirt the one Coast Guard vessel on patrol and can be in Venezuela on a fast pirogue within 30 minutes.
Once back in Trinidad with bags filled with guns, cocaine or compressed marijuana, smugglers need only to stay out of the way of the village police force of eight constables, two corporals and a sergeant working 24 hours shifts.
The Venezuelan coastline runs almost parallel to the south coast, but there is only one other Coast Guard station at Pt Galeota, on Trinidad's heel. One vessel is based there.
The Firearm Interdiction Unit (FIU) has been the most successful over the past year in stopping the goods before delivery.
A spokesperson said: "We have people living down on the peninsula pretending to be fishermen, leaving port aboard a 'normal looking' pirogue equipped with a Global Positioning System (GPS), twin 450 horsepower engines reaching speeds topping 60 kilometres per hour, and capable of getting to Venezuela and back within two hours on a calm night."
In several areas along Trinidad's West Coast, fishing boats can moor only a few feet away from houses located in areas inaccessible by road.
"We have intelligence on people going out to sea with US$200,000 and coming back with a boat load of drugs and handguns. Nobody in Venezuela wants to deal in Bs (Bolivars-the Venezuelan currency) or TT dollars".
The drop-off points are the hundreds of coves and bays along Trinidad's south coast stretching between Morne Diablo and Icacos Point with "gun" boats also making midnight drop-offs at Claxton Bay, Felicity, Carli Bay, and El Socorro.
A stretch of beach two miles east of the fishing ports in Moruga, and accessible by only hunting tracks and a dirt road, has been identified as a drop-off point, as are Granville and Chatham, located on opposite ends of Trinidad's toe.
The FIU spokesperson said: "Outside of us and OCNU (the Organised Crime and Narcotics Unit), nobody and nobody can arrest people involved in this."
The Sunday Express was told of quiet complicity between drug and gun runners and police officers involved in and tipping off crooks about impending surveillance operations, road blocks, and busts.
Of the few arrests made by Southern Western Division police, most have come by chance during roadblocks, and only the transporters, and not the dealers have been arrested.
The FIU spokesperson said "government should know that after the coast guard and radar, [we need] knowledge of who is coming in, when and where. That intelligence we can get only by having informants. And to get informants, we need money to pay them".
The Coast Guard
On any particular day there are about a dozen Coast Guard vessels patrolling the 290-mile coastline of Trinidad in territorial waters 4,600 square miles with launches from three bases at Chaguaramas, Cedros and Point Galeota.
By Coast Guard admission the number of vessels policing our waters are far too few to make any real dent in smuggling operations.
And despite having radar capability to detect vessels, there is no way of telling exactly what cargo is on board the fishing boats used by illegal arms traders.
Added to this is the fact that the Coast Guard only has legal jurisdiction to operate in our waters and cannot make arrests outside of our maritime boundary with Venezuela.
As is the case in mangroves of the Orinoco, it is almost impossible to police our coastline which is also dotted with hundreds of inlets and lagoon systems.
The countless channels that extend along the western and southern coasts makes it even easier for smugglers to get in unnoticed with their deadly cargo.
The thick mangrove growth complicates policing efforts as it is even harder for the traffickers to be detected by air.
Policing on land is almost impossible as there are no roads leading to the several drop off points.
There are usually two to three vessels patrolling any one coastline and this compared with at least a thousand fishing boats in the water at the same time.
The tidal systems also pose problems.
At low tide smaller vessels and a crew that is familiar with the mangroves can easily navigate the remote inlets and channels without being detected and, even if they are seen, it is difficult for the Coast Guard to chase, especially at nights.
Getting the Gun
Getting a gun seems as easy as going to any one of the several fishing ports, and paying a boatman for a ride to the Venezuelan mainland.
Through Cedros, the trip costs only $800 and as little as a box of powered milk for the Venezuelan law enforcement to keep them out of your business.
And it can all be done through legal channels.
At the Immigration and Customs outpost in Cedros you declare your belongings, have your passport stamped and you are on your way.
In Capure, a town of less than 1,000 mostly Warao (native Indian tribesmen), or the larger towns of Peredenales or Tucupita contact is made with the illegal arms dealers, get the guns and head back out in the pirogue to open water.
Some traffickers usually use two options before checking back in at Customs.
Transfer the illegal cargo to another boat, or hit land and conceal the contraband.
