Two days af­ter eight men es­caped from the Gold­en Grove Re­mand Yard Prison in Arou­ca on May 15, a let­ter was sent by a prison of­fi­cer to Com­mis­sion­er of Pris­ons Ger­ald Wil­son and oth­er se­niors rais­ing grave safe­ty and se­cu­ri­ty is­sues at the prison as well as oth­er mat­ters that are af­fect­ing the prison of­fi­cers' abil­i­ty to do their jobs.

On­ly days be­fore the let­ter was sent to his se­niors, Olatun­gi Den­bow, Michael Find­lay, Ste­fon Austin, Brent John­son, Ker­ry Valenti­no, Mikale Mo­hammed, At­i­ba Sealey, and Joshua Janet had es­caped from the Gold­en Grove Re­mand Yard Prison. The pris­on­ers es­caped by scal­ing the fence in an area of the perime­ter that was not prop­er­ly lit.

Five of the men were held with­in 24 hours of their es­cape in the Las Lo­mas area, while Den­bow and Find­lay were held in South Orop­uche 11 days lat­er.

The Sun­day Guardian ob­tained a copy of the let­ter which was writ­ten by sta­tion rep­re­sen­ta­tive, prison of­fi­cer 1 Christo­pher Co­zi­er in which he not on­ly out­lined a num­ber of con­cerns with­in the walls of the prison but rec­om­mend­ed some so­lu­tions to al­le­vi­ate the prob­lems.

Co­zi­er stat­ed at the start of the let­ter: "We have been through the ups and downs at our sta­tion, from ri­ots and at­tacks to es­capes, with­out bur­den­ing oth­ers, as any re­quests for as­sis­tance usu­al­ly falls on deaf ears."

Safe­ty and se­cu­ri­ty is­sues

One of the main is­sues Co­zi­er raised was that "be­ing placed in a min­i­mum se­cu­ri­ty com­pound sees a lack of pri­or­i­ty where dy­nam­ic se­cu­ri­ty is con­cerned". He raised is­sues with lack of pa­trols, sta­t­ic se­cu­ri­ty, poor light­ing and un­manned se­cu­ri­ty tow­ers.

To cor­rect this prob­lem, Co­zi­er sug­gest­ed more pa­trols need­ed to be car­ried out around the Gold­en Grove Re­mand Yard prison and that there should be ex­tra su­per­vi­sion of civil­ian staff car­ry­ing out works around the build­ing.

He sug­gest­ed that to deal with poor light­ing at the fa­cil­i­ty, they should strate­gi­cal­ly place portable con­struc­tion lights.

Co­zi­er al­so rec­om­mend­ed, the po­lice Emer­gency Re­sponse Unit (ERU) "make rounds at the Re­mand Yard Prison dur­ing di­et and lock­down pro­ce­dures. This mea­sure would show an in­crease in se­cu­ri­ty in­tent and fos­ter a smoother run­ning of these volatile dai­ly ex­er­cis­es".

Wil­son re­sponds:

The Sun­day Guardian con­tact­ed Pris­ons Com­mis­sion­er Ger­ald Wil­son who was on va­ca­tion leave. He said the let­ter might not have come di­rect­ly to his at­ten­tion, but he was will­ing to ad­dress the par­tic­u­lar is­sues raised.

Re­fer­ring to the perime­ter fence which the men scaled to es­cape, Wil­son said,

"I agree that this area is poor­ly lit and it was some­thing we thought about af­ter the es­cape. But we can­not just add ex­tra lights to the Gold­en Grove com­pound. Too many lights could over­load the sys­tem. It was on­ly ear­li­er this year we got an­oth­er trans­former so the idea of adding lights could now be done. And this idea of portable light­ing I did dis­cuss with Mr Clarke (Ag Pris­ons Com­mis­sion­er)."

With re­spect to pa­trols by the ERU, Wil­son said they usu­al­ly come down to the prison and su­per­vise af­ter court every af­ter­noon un­til all in­mates are placed in­side their cells. "The ERU then makes pe­ri­od­i­cal rounds. Re­mem­ber the rea­son for that is that they make rounds at reg­u­lar and ir­reg­u­lar in­ter­vals. This is to en­sure that their pat­terns are not mon­i­tored by the in­mates," he ex­plained.

Man­pow­er short­age

One of the press­ing mat­ters ad­dressed by Co­zi­er was "in­suf­fi­cient" staff at the Gold­en Grove prison. He in­di­cat­ed there was a to­tal of 252 of­fi­cers on ac­tive du­ty and gave a break­down as fol­lows: main shift 77, A batch 59, B batch 55, and C batch 61. He in­di­cat­ed that at last count the prison was "av­er­ag­ing 1,000 in­mates with an av­er­age of 55 of­fi­cers per batch".

Co­zi­er stat­ed that an "av­er­age of three hos­pi­talised in­mates per du­ty con­tributes to a loss of six of­fi­cers per du­ty".

"An­oth­er ten of­fi­cers are re­quired for the night du­ty, this re­duces the av­er­age to 39 of­fi­cers on the 1 pm t0 9 pm shift and its 6 am to 2 pm shift. This staff al­so cov­ers the Ex­ter­nal Re­mand Fa­cil­i­ty (ERF) which would re­quire at least an av­er­age of 12 of­fi­cers for the en­tire shift, which re­sults in a to­tal of 27 of­fi­cers."

Wil­son re­sponds:

In re­sponse to this mat­ter, Wil­son in­di­cat­ed that there is present­ly a man­pow­er au­dit be­ing con­duct­ed.

How­ev­er, he sought to clear up mis­con­strued state­ments when it comes to staff is­sues at this prison. "The Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice does not de­ploy staff. The su­per­vi­sors on site are re­spon­si­ble for the de­ploy­ment of staff. We try to utilise staff. We cer­tain­ly do not have enough of­fi­cers so we have to be strate­gic on how we de­ploy staff.

"The at­tri­tion rate is high and there are al­so stress fac­tors. Some of­fi­cers are stay­ing home. We en­sure no more than ten per cent of staff is on va­ca­tion. If we cross that num­ber we don't send any­one else."

He said they al­so had to deal not on­ly with those who were on va­ca­tion but those on ex­tend­ed leave and those who have aban­doned their posts.

Wil­son was crit­i­cal about the num­bers quot­ed by Co­zi­er with re­spect to the night watch. "Dur­ing the night the in­mates are locked in so we need less of­fi­cers in the night. We on­ly need a cer­tain num­ber for vig­i­lance dur­ing lock­down," Wil­son ex­plained.

De­plorable dor­mi­to­ry con­di­tions

Co­zi­er al­so ad­dressed the ur­gent need to have the dor­mi­to­ry con­di­tions im­proved stat­ing that there are non­func­tion­al ap­pli­ances, three-year-old mat­tress­es, and lin­ger­ing wa­ter and plumb­ing is­sues

"The is­sue here seems not to be that of pro­cure­ment but of main­te­nance".

He rec­om­mend­ed in his let­ter that an of­fi­cer be des­ig­nat­ed as the dor­mi­to­ry of­fi­cer to sub­mit a dai­ly check­list to the su­per­vi­sor which in­cludes the list of ap­pli­ances, bath­rooms, toi­lets and face sinks and de­tail their func­tion­al­i­ty as well.

Wil­son re­sponds:

But the Pris­ons Com­mis­sion­er said that the con­di­tions out­lined by Co­zi­er in­side the pris­ons dor­mi­to­ry are the fault of the very said prison of­fi­cers.

"It's the same prison of­fi­cers who com­plain have it so. Of­fi­cers have tak­en away the show­er heads, toi­let han­dles, and toi­let seats.

"Can you imag­ine that we have a stove in a cage with a lock?" Wil­son said. He said Co­zi­er's rec­om­men­da­tion could be tak­en in­to con­sid­er­a­tion and they could ap­point a fa­cil­i­ties man­ag­er of the dor­mi­to­ry.

Low morale and out­stand­ing over­time mon­ey

One of the fi­nal is­sues ad­dressed by Co­zi­er is the morale of prison of­fi­cers and their dis­en­chant­ment with not re­ceiv­ing over­time mon­ey. Of­fi­cers claimed they have been owed over­time from as far back as 2015. "It is sug­gest­ed that one of­fi­cer be re­spon­si­ble for cal­cu­la­tions and en­sur­ing that these monies are paid with­out favour. Too long there has been sit­u­a­tions of some batch­es be­ing paid and oth­ers not. Ded­i­cat­ing a sin­gle prison of­fi­cer two to this task should see fair re­sults and erad­i­cate the chances of cor­rup­tion in this process," he said.

Wil­son re­sponds:

Wil­son made it clear that this mat­ter hinges on the re­lease of funds. "When you hear in the Bud­get that pris­ons get mon­ey peo­ple feel a van with a vault pulls with two mil­lion dol­lars in cash. We have a sub-ac­count­ing de­part­ment and the Pris­ons Com­mis­sion­er has to go through the min­istry. When we are talk­ing about pay­ments owed for pre­vi­ous years it must be first au­dit­ed and that will take some time," Wil­son said.

BOX

Two more weeks for es­cape probe to wrap up

Pris­ons Com­mis­sion­er Ger­ald Wil­son says that the ASP that has been tasked to in­ves­ti­gate the May 15 es­cape of eight pris­on­ers from the Gold­en Grove Re­mand Yard Prison may be giv­en an ad­di­tion­al two weeks to com­plete his in­ves­ti­ga­tion.

Wil­son said that the in­ves­ti­ga­tor was orig­i­nal­ly giv­en 30 days to com­plete the in­ves­ti­ga­tion. "But now I think he might need a week or two again. He is look­ing at the cir­cum­stances of the es­cape and then from that, we will look at rec­om­men­da­tions and per­haps those who were cul­pa­ble. We want to be very care­ful so that we do not have a sim­i­lar sit­u­a­tion fol­low­ing the Port-of-Spain jail­break when of­fi­cers were sus­pend­ed in 2015."

In 2015, Al­lan "Scan­ny" Mar­tin, Has­san Atwell, and Christo­pher "Mon­ster" Sel­by shot their way out of the Port-of-Spain prison on Fred­er­ick Street. Mar­tin, mo­ments lat­er, was shot and killed by po­lice at the Port-of-Spain Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tal, while Atwell, who es­caped in a ve­hi­cle, was found two days lat­er shot dead in Port-of-Spain. Sel­by lat­er sur­ren­dered to po­lice.

Dur­ing the es­cape 27-year-old po­lice con­sta­ble Sher­man May­nard was shot and killed out­side the prison af­ter he was al­leged­ly shot by Mar­tin.