Predawn Corporate Area, rural operations yield guns and ammo
Published:Thursday | February 27, 2025 | 12:11 AMAndre Williams/Staff Reporter
Live rounds seized inside the parking lot of the Manor Centre shopping mall in Constant Spring and a loaded firearm seized along Red Hills Road are the successes coming out of a predawn operation conducted by the security forces in St Andrew yesterday.
The joint police-military exercises, which got under way in the wee hours of the morning and which were the second series of operational activities so far this month in the St Andrew North Police Division, took place in the areas overseen by the Grants Pen and Constant Spring police stations.
On February 12, a similar operation was conducted in Ackee Walk, where 30 persons were apprehended and processed.
The police said nine .38 rounds were seized in the Manor Centre parking lot yesterday.
Earlier in the morning, the security team seized a TP9 Canik 9mm pistol with serial number affixed and a magazine containing 11 9mm rounds.
No one was arrested in either operation.
The police said yesterday that several suspects were picked up during the operations and processed.
Acting Superintendent of Police Randy Sweeney, commander of the St Andrew North Police Division, told The Gleaner that the strategic operational outings were part of efforts to reduce crime and violence.
EFFORTS TO REDUCE CRIME
“We want to reassure members of the public that we are committed to reducing criminality. We are relentless in our pursuit of criminal suspects and wrongdoers, who will not be allowed to be comfortable in this division,” Sweeney said of the predawn operations that have taken place so far this month.
He also sought to assure law-abiding residents, who may have felt inconvenienced, some by the sounds of helicopters floating over homes, that the process was simply to have a controlled space to weed out criminals.
“We continue to seek their support and urge them to share information about crimes in their communities and suspects involved by calling the Constant Spring Police Station at 876-924-1421 or Crime Stop at 311,” said the divisional head.
The police in the St Elizabeth Police Division had similar success yesterday in removing three illegal firearms and 38 rounds of ammunition from the streets.
Six persons, including a female, were arrested after the targeted predawn operation in Warminster, Nain, in St Elizabeth.
Superintendent Coleridge Minto, commanding officer for the St Elizabeth Police Division, said the weapons were found during the search of several properties.
“At this particular location, a thorough search was done of the building. A 9mm pistol was found in one of the rooms. A number of 12-gauge cartridges were also found in a stove inside the house. A further search of this area yielded a Uzi submachine gun that was found under a tree. The intelligence led us to some adjoining premises, where a shotgun was found in the perimeter of one of the premises,” Minto said via video recording.
Minto indicated that the individuals arrested surrendered peacefully to the police.
Up to February 8 this year, the police have seized 84 illegal firearms including nine rifles, one submachine gun, a shotgun, 58 pistols, 12 revolvers, and three homemade firearms.
For the similar period in 2024, 93 firearms were seized while 138 were recovered in 2023 and 108 in 2022.
Ammunition seizures, as at February 8, 2025, amounted to 1,474.
For the corresponding period in 2024, seizures were made of 1,270 assorted rounds. In 2023, the securities recovered 1,030 assorted rounds. A year earlier, 1,885 were seized, and in 2021, another 1,312 were seized.