US authorities’ success in tackling weapons smuggling across the Mexican-US border has led to more weapons entering Bermuda and the Caribbean, according to police in the region.But police in Bermuda and the Caribbean are working together to beef up the fight against violent crime and gangs by sharing ballistic information and intervention programmes targeting children as young as nine years old.And every Police officer in the region is to be equipped with trauma kits to help save lives in the event criminals turn their guns on them.David Baines, the newly elected president of the Association of Caribbean Commissioners of Police which has just concluded its annual conference at the Fairmont Hamilton Princess, told the media yesterday that stemming the flow of weapons into the region was a key strategic imperative.“What is becoming increasingly apparent is that weapons that were going to the South Americans through the Mexican border — as the US authorities are now closing that border, we’re beginning to see an increase in gun dealers in the Florida area growing in number and the weapons that are being recovered throughout the region originating in Florida itself,” he said.In addition to working closely with the US authorities, the conference has agreed to set up a Regional Integrated Ballistic Network which would allow sharing of ballistic information throughout the region.“When a gun is used or fired in anyone of our islands it is compared not just with evidence in that island but also in every other island in the Caribbean. And then we can take it further to see and connect it to crime scenes anywhere in the world via the use of Interpol.“We have acquired the technical equipment to do this. We have now all committed to the agreement to sign up and share that data between every one of our Caribbean countries and to move that to operational capability as soon as it is practical and certainly in the next few months.”Mr Baines said that guns were being traded for drugs or to pay for the smuggling of people. “There have and continue to be direct connectivity of weapons being used in one jurisdiction such as the Bahamas being used for criminality in the US and then being found later in Jamaica,” he added.He gave an example of a weapon which was imported into the US as a war trophy, went “off the radar” and later turned up in Jamaica and then the Cayman Islands.Some US residents were purchasing weapons and smuggling them into the Caribbean hidden in appliances or children’s toys, he said.Commissioner Baines, who heads up the Police Service in the Cayman Islands said the conference had heard directly from an officer who survived being shot by a gang armed with AK47 and high velocity weapons because of the presence of a trauma kit in the car.“It’s inspired every Commissioner to commit that every Police officer in the region will be equipped with trauma kits and every vehicle will carry trauma kits because minutes will save lives.“Its intended that not only will it keep our officers safer, but it will have them better prepared to save lives when they are first on the scene to stem bleeding of somebody who’s been shot and is bleeding profusely.”Commissioner Baines said that the ACCP will be conducting a survey to determine how many trauma kits will be needed and that sponsors are also being sought.There are 10,000 police officers in the Bermuda and Caribbean region. Bermuda’s Police Commissioner Michael Desilva, now the first vice-president of the ACCP, said that not all police vehicles on the Island are equipped with trauma kits.