Jensen La Vende

With one of their mem­bers mur­dered and an­oth­er in hos­pi­tal af­ter be­ing shot mem­bers of the Pris­ons Ser­vice say they have re­ceived in­for­ma­tion of an­oth­er threat.

The in­for­ma­tion, they say, have been re­ceived from the Na­tion­al Op­er­a­tions Cen­tre which re­layed a threat stat­ing that five more prison of­fi­cers will be killed. The threat is be­ing in­ves­ti­gat­ed.

It comes one day af­ter pris­ons of­fi­cer Otis John­son was shot mo­ments af­ter he left the Fred­er­ick Street Prison on Sun­day night.

Ac­cord­ing to po­lice, John­son was walk­ing near Roy­al Cas­tle around 7.30 pm when a car pulled up. Oc­cu­pants of the car shot him in the back and ab­domen. A pass­ing am­bu­lance took him to hos­pi­tal.

Pris­ons of­fi­cers at the prison on Sun­day told the T&T Guardian that some mem­bers were will­ing to re­sign. A friend of John­son's said af­ter An­dell Primus was killed on Fri­day he and John­son were con­tem­plat­ing quit­ting.

Primus, 27, was shot three times in the head by gun­men, thrown out of his ve­hi­cle and left for dead at Red Hill, Mor­vant.

Primus, a fa­ther of a two-month-old ba­by girl, died while be­ing tak­en to the Port-of-Spain Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tal.

Pris­ons of­fi­cers on Sun­day night were es­cort­ed to their ve­hi­cles by their heav­i­ly-armed col­leagues as a po­lice jeep with two of­fi­cers kept a close eye on the prison.

Pris­ons of­fi­cers were heard telling video­g­ra­phers that their lives were in dan­ger and they video­tap­ing them was mak­ing it worse.

In a me­dia re­lease yes­ter­day Com­mis­sion­er of Pris­ons Ster­ling Stew­art con­demned the at­tack on his of­fi­cers and said enough was enough.

"The at­tack on the lives of our na­tion's pris­ons of­fi­cers con­tin­ues and I want first of all to urge our of­fi­cers to stand strong, stand firm and un­wa­ver­ing in their du­ties but I al­so urge them to be vig­i­lant and care­ful as they go about their du­ties and their dai­ly walk of life.

"We will al­low the po­lice to do their job to bring these killers to jus­tice. For too long the lives of my of­fi­cers have been threat­ened and snuffed out by the un­de­sir­ables in so­ci­ety and I want to state cat­e­gor­i­cal­ly that enough is def­i­nite­ly enough," Stew­art said.

In a brief tele­phone in­ter­view gen­er­al sec­re­tary of the Pris­ons As­so­ci­a­tion Ger­ard Gor­don said the as­so­ci­a­tion had giv­en the au­thor­i­ties one week to im­ple­ment poli­cies to save its mem­bers. He en­cour­aged his mem­bers not to make hasty de­ci­sions and re­sign.