00:00Director of the Firearms Training Institute, Nairi Alfonso, says concerns are mounting over the missing firearms and what it could
00:09mean for TNT.
00:11She notes that of the estimated 105 firearms stolen during the fatal robbery, only about 43 have been reportedly recovered.
00:20She also notes that of the approximately 4,000 rounds of ammunition reported stolen, fewer than 300 have so far
00:29been retrieved, warning that these figures point to serious vulnerabilities in the security apparatus and the urgent need for stricter
00:38control measures over state weaponry.
00:41Do the police have bank-grade walls to keep these weapons in? And if you have bank-grade walls, do
00:48you have, well, bank-like records to keep them safe and to keep taking account of when they go out
00:55and how much ammunition they go out with and how much ammunition is returned? That's the kind of systems that
01:01you have to put in place.
01:02The attorney also responds to the Police Social and Welfare Association's call not to generalize blame across the service, stating
01:12that public confidence has been significantly undermined by the actions of some within the system.
01:18I'm not painting the police services as, as you know, 100% crooks and people that you can't distrust, but
01:25it's not one bad apple in the barrel.
01:28There are several bad apples in the barrel, in my view, and there's also what we like to call the
01:35herd mentality, so that there's an issue of police officers protecting police officers, not saying that there's not investigation, there's
01:43not the PCA and so on,
01:44but the natural tendency of police officers is to protect each other.
01:51Alfonso tells the Morning Edition this is not an isolated occurrence, pointing to previous instances where firearms have been unlawfully
02:00removed from protective services custody, adding that oftentimes it involves high-powered rifles.
02:08A lot of the ammunition that we find with the markings is very high-powered ammunition, 5.56, 7.62.
02:15I mean, so, there's a, you know, I can't say there's a joke, but, you know, there's an analogy with
02:21the 7.62.
02:22It will go through a wall, it will go through a car, it will go through a truck, and it
02:25will travel three-quarter of a mile down the road and kill somebody.
02:29So, that's the ammunition, when you see you have spent shells on a crime scene of 7.62, that's the
02:35potential to do, to kill and to maim and to injure.
02:40Nicole M. Romany, TV6 News.
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