(Trinidad Guardian) More than two dozen local police officers are currently under watch by the T&T Police Service Professional Standards Bureau having been implicated in an intrinsic human trafficking ring operating between Venezuela and Trinidad and Tobago.
The investigations are occurring even as police are probing the recent illegal entry of scores of Venezuelans into T&T. Guardian Media was told surveillance drones and a newly-formed Police Coastal Unit will come on stream over the next month to crack down on human trafficking and smuggling in the southwestern peninsula.
The trafficking network, which is supported and operated by corrupt local law enforcement officers, has been exposed in a 2019 Caricom Study on Human Trafficking conducted by Dr. Justine Pierre.
Reliable sources say the state-of-the-art drones will patrol a 10-mile expanse of porous coastline along the peninsula where Venezuelan migrants, livestock, honey, guns, and drugs are brought in. Every vessel coming into territorial waters will be monitored and it will work in tandem with increased activity by the T&T Coast Guard.
A source who requested anonymity said the traffickers often pay police officers to transport their illegal human cargo.
