Derek Achong

The trou­ble with­in the prison sys­tem es­ca­lat­ed to an­oth­er lev­el yes­ter­day, af­ter a list of the names, ad­dress­es and tele­phone num­bers of sev­er­al pris­ons of­fi­cers was found hid­den in­side the wall of a cell at the Max­i­mum Se­cu­ri­ty Prison in Arou­ca.

The dis­cov­ery was made by of­fi­cers who were search­ing pris­on­ers and their cells dur­ing a lock­down of the fa­cil­i­ty on Mon­day night. The lock­down came in re­sponse to sev­er­al vi­o­lent at­tacks on pris­ons of­fi­cers in the wake protest ac­tion tak­en by of­fi­cers over the killing of one of their col­leagues on No­vem­ber 7. Sev­er­al pris­ons of­fi­cers, who spoke yes­ter­day on con­di­tion of anonymi­ty, de­scribed the doc­u­ment as a "hit list" and said the dis­cov­ery had left many of their col­leagues fear­ing for their safe­ty.

A source said the list con­tained per­son­al in­for­ma­tion on both first and sec­ond di­vi­sion of­fi­cers at the prison. Of­fi­cers claimed Andy Rogers, the of­fi­cer whose bru­tal mur­der on No­vem­ber 7 sparked protests from his col­leagues, was among of­fi­cers named on the list.Apart from the list, the of­fi­cers al­so re­cov­ered a large haul of con­tra­band items, in­clud­ing dozens of cell­phones, phone charg­ers, a mo­bile broad­band In­ter­net hotspot, mar­i­jua­na, co­caine, ra­zor blades and oth­er im­pro­vised weapons.

"This list was for­ward­ed al­ready via so­cial me­dia and e-mails on some of the cell­phones found to sev­er­al links in the crim­i­nal un­der­world," a prison source claimed.The Prison Of­fi­cers' As­so­ci­a­tion (POA) has made sev­er­al sug­ges­tions to help al­le­vi­ate its mem­bers' health and safe­ty con­cerns, in­clud­ing al­low­ing cer­tain of­fi­cers an op­por­tu­ni­ty to take their firearms home.

On Mon­day, Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar an­nounced the ap­point­ment of an eight-mem­ber com­mit­tee chaired by Prof Ramesh De­osaran to in­ves­ti­gate the of­fi­cers and pris­on­ers' com­plaints. The com­mit­tee held its first meet­ing yes­ter­day.Con­tact­ed yes­ter­day, pres­i­dent of the POA, Cer­ron Richards, re­fused to com­ment on the is­sue."I don't want to com­ment on that right now...I don't know any­thing about that," he said.

In a ra­dio in­ter­view yes­ter­day, Richards al­so re­vealed that pris­on­ers at the MSP were able to open the doors to pris­ons cells there on Mon­day night.He said of­fi­cers had raised con­cerned about the com­pro­mised se­cu­ri­ty at the MSP be­fore, but were un­aware pris­on­ers ac­tu­al­ly had the abil­i­ty to con­trol doors un­til Mon­day night, when they ac­tu­al­ly saw it for the first time as the pris­on­ers opened cell doors dur­ing a ri­ot sit­u­a­tion.

Jus­tice Min­is­ter Em­manuel George al­so said he was un­aware of the in­ci­dent "as yet.""In­for­ma­tion will come to me I'm sure," George said in a brief tele­phone in­ter­view yes­ter­day evening.Sev­er­al calls to Pris­ons Com­mis­sion­er Mar­tin Mar­tinez all went unan­swered and he did not re­turn calls.In an in­ter­view on Mon­day, Mar­tinez plead­ed with his of­fi­cers to be pa­tient while their con­cerns were be­ing ad­dressed by the spe­cial pris­ons com­mit­tee and warned that their con­tin­ued ac­tion might af­fect their safe­ty.

"If the pris­on­ers are not fed on time, they are de­nied vis­its, or are in any way dis­ad­van­taged, it would be to the tragedy of the of­fi­cers be­cause they will feel the back­lash," Mar­tinez was quot­ed as say­ing.

Prison sources al­so re­vealed yes­ter­day that the of­fi­cers' protest, which be­gan at the Gold­en Grove State Prison and at the Max­i­mum Se­cu­ri­ty Prison, has now spread to the two oth­er pris­ons–the Port-of-Spain and Car­rera Is­land State Pris­ons. They claimed since the protest be­gan last week, sev­er­al pris­on­ers and pris­ons of­fi­cers have been in­jured in vi­o­lent clash­es.

The T&T Guardian un­der­stands that in the lat­est in­ci­dent, one of­fi­cer at the Max­i­mum Se­cu­ri­ty Prison was hit on the head with a met­al bar dur­ing an al­ter­ca­tion with a pris­on­er on Mon­day night. The of­fi­cer was tak­en to the Er­ic Williams Med­ical Sci­ences Com­plex in Mt Hope for treat­ment and re­mained ward­ed in sta­ble con­di­tion up to late yes­ter­day.

The of­fi­cers' protest has al­so caused de­lays at the courts, with judges and mag­is­trates hav­ing to ad­journ nu­mer­ous tri­als and cas­es be­cause pris­on­ers are not be­ing tak­en to court. Oth­er pris­on­ers are com­plain­ing of feel­ing ill be­cause of de­lays in their meals.A tri­al in the Port-of-Spain High Court had to be ad­journed yes­ter­day af­ter a pris­on­er com­plained of feel­ing un­well from in­hal­ing fumes from de­bris burnt by fel­low pris­on­ers at the Max­i­mum Se­cu­ri­ty Prison dur­ing their protest.