If prison of­fi­cers de­cide to walk off the job and leave some of the coun­try’s most no­to­ri­ous crim­i­nals un­guard­ed, po­lice will step in to pro­tect cit­i­zens.
In re­sponse to the Prison Of­fi­cers’ As­so­ci­a­tion’s (POA) threat yes­ter­day to leave the job, Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice Gary Grif­fith said his charges were ful­ly pre­pared for that even­tu­al­i­ty.

Emo­tions were run­ning high yes­ter­day when POA pres­i­dent Ceron Richards is­sued the warn­ing to the State dur­ing a press con­fer­ence in Arou­ca, hours af­ter the mur­der of prison of­fi­cer Dar­ren Fran­cis in New Grant.
Fran­cis was the sec­ond prison of­fi­cer mur­dered and the third tar­get­ted by the crim­i­nal el­e­ment in re­cent times.

How­ev­er, Grif­fith said that de­ci­sions and com­ments should not be made while an­gry, as it may not be the best.

“I think the com­ments be­ing made of ask­ing prison of­fi­cers to walk out on their jobs, as much as this is a very trau­mat­ic pe­ri­od for the prison ser­vice, mak­ing emo­tion­al de­ci­sions such as that do not help the sit­u­a­tion and it cer­tain­ly does not help the cit­i­zens of this coun­try,” Grif­fith said. 

“What we need is to not make de­ci­sions and com­ments when we are an­gry and for us to be able to work to­geth­er as a team with­in the dif­fer­ent arms of na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty to rec­ti­fy the prob­lem and not just drop tools. Any­one who drops tools like that, the Trinidad and To­ba­go Po­lice Ser­vice is ful­ly pre­pared to get in there and to do the job to pro­tect the cit­i­zens of this coun­try.”

While he em­pathised with the prison of­fi­cers, he said Richards should not throw blame at the Po­lice Ser­vice or the state but in­stead look in the mir­ror and re­alise it was time to clean his house.
He said on be­com­ing com­mis­sion­er, he knew that in or­der for the ser­vice to ex­cel rogue el­e­ments had to be weed­ed out. 

“The coun­try has seen that on a reg­u­lar ba­sis, po­lice of­fi­cers are now be­ing ar­rest­ed left, right and cen­tre if any of them com­mit any ac­tion in con­trast to their re­quire­ments. I ask Mr Richards to start look­ing in the mir­ror and do the same rather than blame every­one else.”

He said while he would not la­bel the prison ser­vice as cor­rupt, there have been re­ports of prison of­fi­cers aid­ing pris­on­ers with tools, some of which are used to or­ches­trate crimes from be­hind the prison walls.

Grif­fith asked Richards what in­for­ma­tion he had ever giv­en to any po­lice com­mis­sion­er point­ing to any prison of­fi­cer who, for years, may have been in­volved in aid­ing and abet­ting crim­i­nals by smug­gling hand grenades, drugs and phones.

“I have just as­sist­ed the Com­mis­sion­er of Pris­ons with in­tel­li­gence about one pris­on­er ac­quir­ing three cell phones in the space of 24 hours. As soon as you seize a phone from him an­oth­er is giv­en. That is not the Po­lice Ser­vice that caused that, that is not the State that caused that, so Mr Richards should re­al­ly look in the mir­ror rather than be­ing very emo­tion­al at this dis­turb­ing time.”

He said the POA’s lob­by for firearms for all of­fi­cers was al­so a knee-jerk ap­proach, adding his rem­e­dy was to stop the drugs and the phones from get­ting in­to pris­on­ers’ hands since this is what al­lows them to or­der hits. 
 Grif­fith be­lieves the Po­lice ser­vice can al­so do more to help the prison ser­vice, but he said any ac­tion they take must be au­tho­rised by the Com­mis­sion­er of Pris­ons.

“There is an el­e­ment of high­ly trained po­lice of­fi­cers in the prison, but as I said I am not in charge of the op­er­a­tions with­in the prison. I can on­ly do so much based on the re­quest by the Com­mis­sion­er of Pris­ons.”