Where There Is Smoke There Is Fire In This Troupe Saga…

There are con­flict­ing reports sur­round­ing a cache of weapons which was inter­cept­ed by US Customs and Border Protection (CBT) and Outbound Enforcement Team (OET) at the US air­port on November 13. The ship­ment was report­ed­ly des­tined for Montego Bay Jamaica.

Reports indi­cate the cache of a hun­dred and nineteen(119) weapons of vary­ing cal­ibers and 200 rounds of assort­ed ammu­ni­tion, as well as firearm parts, were dis­cov­ered by cops who lat­er coör­di­nat­ed with their Jamaican counterparts.
It is report­ed that a sting was set up on the Jamaican end but the con­signee, a woman who was employed to PNP Councillor Michael Troupe as his secretary.
The mil­lion dol­lar ques­tion is,” who told the con­signee not to turn up to receive the shipment”?
If there was a col­lab­o­ra­tion between Florida law enforce­ment and Jamaican author­i­ties, as have been report­ed, it is impor­tant to know who was in pos­ses­sion of said infor­ma­tion in Jamaica where the leak was cer­tain to have emanat­ed from?

Reports indi­cate that no one turned up to receive the ship­ment, which is incred­i­bly odd on the face of it. Why would­n’t the person/​s to whom this mas­sive ship­ment of guns and ammu­ni­tion not turn up to receive the ship­ment, unless of course, some­one tipped them off that the ship­ment was already inter­cept­ed by law enforcement?
The ques­tion which must be asked at this point is, who in the cor­rupt Jamaican sew­er had access to the infor­ma­tion that a sting was set up to nab the recipient?

As soon as the sto­ry broke the PNP issued a state­ment indi­cat­ing that the woman to whom the ship­ment was con­signed was at one time in the employ of Troupe but three months ago she walked off the job with­out even giv­ing a rea­son for leaving.
More dig­ging reveals that that state­ment may have been a lie.
The PNP has been scram­bling to dis­tance itself from this hot pota­to even as it pre­tends to be aggres­sive­ly inter­est­ed in a rapid res­o­lu­tion of this tox­ic matter.

Troupe has since hired a lawyer who has inti­mat­ed that the state­ment put out by the PNP may have been premature.
Troupe attor­ney Henry McCurdy insists “We do not know if the name that appears in the social media post is the same per­son who worked for Mr. Troupe and left her job with­out even say­ing to Councillor Troupe that she was leav­ing the job.
She just walked off the job and nev­er returned.”
How convenient?

In the mean­time, Michael Troupe has tak­en to social media to try to ingra­ti­ate him­self with the pub­lic and to offer his own take on events even as he threat­ens to see who­ev­er ques­tions his integri­ty in court.
Trying to intim­i­date crit­ics using threats of legal action is a com­mon tact employed by well-placed crim­i­nals when they are unable to gun down their victims.
Said Michael Troupe “I have made mean­ing­ful con­tri­bu­tions to my coun­try, my parish and, of course, my divi­sion. Therefore, for all those who are slan­der­ing my name, I am pre­pared to see you in court. I stand tall in the face of adver­si­ty.”

In 2012 Michael Troupe was one of two parish coun­cilors in the People’s National Party arrest­ed for lotto-scamming.
Michael Troupe, the then deputy may­or of Montego Bay; and Sylvan Reid, who rep­re­sent­ed the Salt Spring Division — were among five per­sons tak­en into cus­tody by the police in con­nec­tion with the lot­tery scam.
At the time the Police said they seized a large sum of cash and motor vehi­cles in the pre-dawn raids at the homes of both politicians.

The lat­est on this is that the woman in ques­tion received pay­ment from Councillor Troupes as late as three weeks ago.
Troupe shot back that even though she was paid by his office three weeks ago she had long left his employ.
Troupe went on to say that in fact, it was because of the untime­ly nature of pay­ments to work­ers why the woman in ques­tion left his employ.
This lat­est state­ment con­tra­dicts ear­li­er state­ments made by Troupe that he had no idea why the woman walked off the job.

Whether Troupe bears any cul­pa­bil­i­ty in this mat­ter is yet to be deter­mined by the Police. Personally, I will not hold my breath with this Police Department that it is capa­ble of con­duct­ing an inves­ti­ga­tion with­out fear or favor.
Between the cor­rup­tion, lack of know-how and the fear inher­ent in these cops I hard­ly expect a pos­i­tive out­come for the nation despite the fact that the woman in ques­tion is now report­ed­ly in their cus­tody and is being questioned.

Wherever there is smoke there is fire, wher­ev­er there is a lot of smoke there is like­ly a big fire.
This inci­dent is an eye open­er for the Jamaican peo­ple. Many of us have been say­ing for a long time that there is a lot of con­nec­tions behind the mas­sive amounts of weapons which have been flood­ing the Island.

Oh for a Police Department which is unafraid and uncon­cerned about where inves­ti­ga­tions will lead and sim­ply fol­low the evi­dence where it leads?