KEVON FELMINE

kevon.felmine@guardian.co.tt

Af­ter wit­ness­ing the grief of those say­ing farewell to mur­dered prison of­fi­cers Trevor Ser­rette and Nigel Jones, Deputy Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice Mc­Don­ald Ja­cob an­nounced a $.5 mil­lion re­ward for any­one who helps to bring their killers to jus­tice.

Ja­cob an­nounced the re­wards af­ter he, Min­is­ter of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Fitzger­ald Hinds and Pris­ons Com­mis­sion­er Den­nis Pul­chan, at­tend­ed Jones’ fu­ner­al in Siparia on Tues­day..

Dur­ing a me­dia con­fer­ence at the Po­lice Ad­min­is­tra­tion Build­ing in San Fer­nan­do, Ja­cob said the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice con­demns the acts of vi­o­lence against of­fi­cers of the State.

He said the TTPS had ob­served at­tacks on mem­bers of the Prison Ser­vice for some time, with Ser­rette and Jones be­ing among the lat­est.

As such, the Po­lice Ser­vice has col­lab­o­rat­ed with the Min­istry of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty to of­fer a $500,000 re­ward to any­one who can pro­vide in­for­ma­tion that will lead to the ar­rest and pros­e­cu­tion of the sus­pects in­volved in the crimes.

As he ap­pealed to cit­i­zens to come for­ward, he as­sured that the TTPS would han­dle the in­for­ma­tion with the high­est lev­el of con­fi­den­tial­i­ty.

The TTPS will is­sue a me­dia re­lease to in­form peo­ple how to share their re­ports soon, he said.

Ja­cob said the TTPS had put to­geth­er a team com­pris­ing the Homi­cide Bu­reau of In­ves­ti­ga­tions and oth­er units, aid­ed by the Prison Ser­vice. He said the foren­sic team is al­so play­ing a sig­nif­i­cant role in the in­ves­ti­ga­tion.

The team de­tained nine peo­ple and gath­ered cer­tain in­for­ma­tion af­ter ques­tion­ing. How­ev­er, Ja­cob said in­ves­ti­ga­tors had re­leased eight while one re­mained in cus­tody. He said the TTPS would leave no stone un­turned to bring the per­pe­tra­tors to jus­tice. 

Hinds said the min­istry had pre­vi­ous­ly pledged its full sup­port for the Prison Ser­vice to deal with crim­i­nal­i­ty in and out of pris­ons. He said this was be­cause the Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Coun­cil and Gov­ern­ment un­der­stood these at­tacks were not sim­ply against the Prison Ser­vice but on the State.

“They are in­tend­ed to dis­rupt the op­er­a­tions of the pris­ons and the State and to break down the ef­fec­tive­ness of law en­force­ment to do its work. It is a very se­ri­ous busi­ness. In fact, in some places and even here, some peo­ple con­sid­er that this is quin­tes­sen­tial ter­ror­ist ac­tiv­i­ty. Ter­ror­ists do what they do, some­times for po­lit­i­cal and oth­er rea­sons, to dis­rupt the smooth op­er­a­tion of the State and to in­ter­fere with your peace, your safe­ty and se­cu­ri­ty,” Hinds said.

He said Gov­ern­ment had de­cid­ed to ap­ply all re­sources to na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty bod­ies. He said he pro­vides poli­cies and re­sources as the min­is­ter.

How­ev­er, Hinds said prison of­fi­cers must bear all their train­ing and be alert all the time.

“This is no time to be hang­ing about the place.”

With many hits or­ches­trat­ed from be­hind prison walls, Pul­chan was asked how pris­on­ers get mo­bile phones and in­for­ma­tion to their ac­com­plices.

Pul­chan said the Prison Ser­vice lost 28 of­fi­cers in the last 20 years. Since tak­ing up the lead­er­ship role in Jan­u­ary, he said the Prison Ser­vice search­es all mem­bers and vis­i­tors who en­ter its fa­cil­i­ties. So far, the search­es had yield­ed 18 of­fi­cers found with con­tra­band.

He said be­tween 2019 to 2021, many of­fi­cers were sus­pend­ed for traf­fick­ing and oth­er il­le­gal ac­tiv­i­ties while in­ves­ti­ga­tions took place.

How­ev­er, the Prison Ser­vice is now grap­pling with crim­i­nals’ use of new­er tech­nol­o­gy. 

“We do have a prob­lem that seems to be bring­ing up clos­er and clos­er to our door, one of tech­nol­o­gy, where drones seem to be drop­ping pack­ages with­in our prison, and that is one of our prob­lems we are grap­pling with,” Pul­chan said.

These drones, he said, were fly­ing to win­dows in the pris­ons, bring­ing cell­phones to pris­on­ers. While the Prison Ser­vice works with oth­er agen­cies to pre­vent this, Pul­chan said they had caught a few drones and se­cured ev­i­dence that can lead to ar­rests.

How­ev­er, he said they can­not de­tect all drones fly­ing in­to the fa­cil­i­ties. He said the Prison Ser­vice was now try­ing to ne­go­ti­ate for ge­ofenc­ing, which alerts a prison or mon­i­tor­ing agency when a de­vice en­ters a set lo­ca­tion.

Ac­knowl­edg­ing that pris­on­ers make phone calls via mo­bile phones, Hinds re­mind­ed the pub­lic that it is il­le­gal to en­gage in un­law­ful com­mu­ni­ca­tion with a pris­on­er. 

In 2013, Gov­ern­ment in­stalled grab­bers and jam­mers in the pris­ons to block the fre­quen­cy of phone calls to and from the prison. Pul­chan did not com­ment on the use­ful­ness of these de­vices, how­ev­er, say­ing that an­oth­er agency op­er­ates them.

While the Prison Of­fi­cers’ As­so­ci­a­tion ad­vo­cates for per­son­al firearms for all prison of­fi­cers, Ja­cob said of­fi­cers were ap­ply­ing and re­ceiv­ing their Firearm User Li­cense fol­low­ing the process. He said Pul­chan al­so has the pow­er to as­sist of­fi­cers with get­ting firearms.