Charles Kong Soo

The Prison Of­fi­cers As­so­ci­a­tion (POA) says there will be no fur­ther talks un­til all pris­ons of­fi­cers are armed and their safe­ty and se­cu­ri­ty de­mands met.

So said POA pres­i­dent Ceron Richards.

He was speak­ing at the as­so­ci­a­tion's head­quar­ters in Arou­ca yes­ter­day, fol­low­ing the shoot­ing death of 27-year-old pris­ons of­fi­cer An­dell Primus in Mor­vant, Fri­day night.

Richards said, "It is re­gret­table that such an in­ci­dent can hap­pen. We un­der­stand how the fam­i­ly must be feel­ing and ex­press our con­do­lences.

"Pris­ons of­fi­cers have been con­tin­u­ous­ly threat­ened and over 12 of­fi­cers have been mur­dered over the past sev­er­al years. "We've had sev­er­al meet­ings, di­a­logues. We were even part of a com­mit­tee through­out the years in an ef­fort to raise these is­sues and to pro­vide so­lu­tions to no avail.

"We're now de­mand­ing that all of­fi­cers be armed forth­with giv­en the cur­rent and past cir­cum­stances and what is like­ly to hap­pen be­cause we see the prison ser­vice as un­der threat."

He said the POA at this point in time was no longer in­ter­est­ed with meet­ing any of the stake­hold­ers re­gard­ing the safe­ty and se­cu­ri­ty of of­fi­cers on and off du­ty and the reme­dies to be ap­plied.

Richards said an­oth­er of the as­so­ci­a­tion's de­mands was that all of­fi­cers re­sid­ing in high-risk ar­eas who want­ed to move should be re­lo­cat­ed forth­with.

He said if the Gov­ern­ment could give 100 hous­es to cit­i­zens per week, cer­tain­ly it could ac­com­mo­date pris­ons of­fi­cers who ad­vanced the in­ter­ests of the State.

Richards said the as­so­ci­a­tion is­sued an ul­ti­ma­tum that a pol­i­cy po­si­tion from Gov­ern­ment for the pro­tec­tion of pris­ons of­fi­cers should be draft­ed with­in one week, com­mu­ni­cat­ed, and im­ple­ment­ed forth­with.