CHESTER SAM­BRA­NO

Lead Ed­i­tor - News­gath­er­ing

chester.sam­bra­no@guardian.co.tt

The Gov­ern­ment is con­sid­er­ing the re­moval of the Port-of-Spain Prison from the cap­i­tal.

Min­is­ter of Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty Roger Alexan­der con­firmed this dur­ing yes­ter­day’s post-Cab­i­net me­dia brief­ing at the Red House, Port-of-Spain.

His com­ment fol­lowed re­newed calls for the prison’s re­moval by the Prison Of­fi­cers’ As­so­ci­a­tion, af­ter a video sur­faced show­ing a man throw­ing what ap­peared to be con­tra­band over the prison wall yes­ter­day.

Call­ing the sit­u­a­tion “very se­ri­ous,” Alexan­der said, “I al­ways said this be­fore, Port-of-Spain is our city, we re­al­ly are not sup­posed to have a jail in the city. And where it is lo­cat­ed, a lot of schools are around, all of these things. So, it’s some­thing we need to take in­to con­sid­er­a­tion. And we need to look at it in a pos­i­tive way, to re­move that eye­sore from the heart of the city.”

Ear­li­er yes­ter­day, the as­so­ci­a­tion’s pres­i­dent Ger­ard Gor­don said, “Hav­ing a prison like that in the cen­tre of the city—notwith­stand­ing the fact that the city ac­tu­al­ly built up around the prison sub­se­quent­ly—is not do­ing jus­tice or serv­ing the best in­ter­ests of the cit­i­zens of Trinidad and To­ba­go, and cer­tain­ly not the peo­ple who tra­verse Port-of-Spain on a dai­ly ba­sis. We just sim­ply have to go back to the 2015 jail­break and you can see al­most im­me­di­ate­ly the dele­te­ri­ous ef­fects of that. When things hap­pen or go wrong with the prison, it is felt in­stan­ta­neous­ly by the pub­lic. It is our be­lief that we need to re­duce that pop­u­la­tion fur­ther at the Port-of-Spain Prison and that we need to even­tu­al­ly look at com­plete­ly shut­ting down that fa­cil­i­ty.”

Re­spond­ing to this call, Com­mis­sion­er of Pris­ons Car­los Car­raspe said he re­mains du­ty-bound to fol­low the di­rec­tives of the State.

Act­ing Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice Ju­nior Ben­jamin de­clined to of­fer an opin­ion but called for dis­cus­sion among all rel­e­vant State agen­cies to as­sess whether the prison’s cur­rent lo­ca­tion and con­di­tion can with­stand break-in or break-out at­tempts.

Mean­while, po­lice of­fi­cers are search­ing for the man caught on video toss­ing two black bags over the wall of the prison, lo­cat­ed on Fred­er­ick Street, be­fore run­ning away yes­ter­day. The il­le­gal act was done in full view of mo­torists and passers­by.

Act­ing CoP Ben­jamin said the sus­pect is a re­peat of­fend­er who pre­vi­ous­ly served time for the same of­fence.

“We have put all our of­fi­cers on alert to look for this gen­tle­man, and cer­tain­ly we are go­ing to be bring­ing him to jus­tice. My un­der­stand­ing is that the in­di­vid­ual is on bail,” he said.

Ad­dress­ing the wider is­sue of con­tra­band be­ing thrown in­to the prison, Ben­jamin said, “It’s hap­pen­ing a bit too of­ten, and there­fore there’s a need for us to re­al­ly do some­thing more to avoid this ad­verse sit­u­a­tion. “Al­so, we’re go­ing to be see­ing how we could prob­a­bly up our se­cu­ri­ty around the pris­ons, but again we are go­ing to seek to mon­i­tor this sit­u­a­tion so that at least, we can get a greater grip on that, so can have some de­ter­rence to per­sons who are in­ter­est­ed in con­tin­u­ing this prac­tice.”

Com­mis­sion­er Car­raspe con­firmed a search was launched in­side the prison for the il­le­gal items and an in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­to how the breach oc­curred has been launched.

“We have been able to re­trieve some of the items which we as­sume were in the bag, but we have to make an as­sump­tion be­cause, as I said, we did not get the bags im­me­di­ate­ly af­ter they were thrown over. But this is some­thing preva­lent—like how does it work? How does the per­son know where to throw it? Who’s col­lect­ing it? That kind of thing. We can make an as­sump­tion that there may be of­fi­cers in­volved,” he said.

On the is­sue of pos­si­ble of­fi­cer in­volve­ment, Gor­don said the law must take its course.

“When it comes to re­spond­ing to in­stances of breach­es in se­cu­ri­ty, thor­ough in­ves­ti­ga­tions must hap­pen to at­tempt to ar­rest, re­duce, and pre­vent any pos­si­ble fu­ture breach­es. Of­fi­cers are part of the se­cu­ri­ty ma­trix and will be called to ac­count for their man­age­ment of the space with­in which they work.”

In Ju­ly 2015, in­mates Al­lan “Scan­ny” Mar­tin, Has­san Atwell and Christo­pher “Mon­ster” Sel­by es­caped in broad day­light from the prison. Armed with firearms, they shot their way out, killing con­sta­ble Sher­man May­nard dur­ing the break­out. The es­cape trig­gered a na­tion­wide man­hunt.

Of­fi­cers killed Mar­tin in a shootout lat­er that day. Atwell was found dead in east Port-of-Spain the fol­low­ing day. Sel­by sur­ren­dered two days lat­er.