JENSEN LA VENDE

Se­nior Re­porter

jensen.lavende@guardian.co.tt

The same day prison of­fi­cers spot­ted a man at­tempt­ing to throw con­tra­band items of­fi­cers found im­pro­vised weapons in the ceil­ing of the East­ern Cor­rec­tion­al Re­ha­bil­i­ta­tion Cen­tre (ECRC).

In a me­dia re­lease to­day the Prison Of­fi­cers As­so­ci­a­tion (POA) said the items were found around 10:45 am. While search­ing the Hope Di­vi­sion of the fa­cil­i­ty, six im­pro­vised weapons were dis­cov­ered con­cealed at the top of a cell.

"Im­pro­vised weapons pose a se­ri­ous threat with­in the cor­rec­tion­al en­vi­ron­ment, with the po­ten­tial to en­dan­ger the safe­ty and se­cu­ri­ty of both in­mates and prison per­son­nel. Their de­tec­tion and re­moval re­main crit­i­cal to main­tain­ing or­der, re­duc­ing the risk of vi­o­lence and pre­serv­ing a safe and se­cure en­vi­ron­ment with­in cor­rec­tion­al fa­cil­i­ties," the re­lease stat­ed.

It added that the vig­i­lance, thor­ough­ness, and at­ten­tion to de­tail of the of­fi­cers on du­ty led to the items be­ing found.

"The find fur­ther high­lights the im­por­tance of con­sis­tent search ex­er­cis­es and con­tin­ued alert­ness in main­tain­ing the safe­ty and se­cu­ri­ty of cor­rec­tion­al in­sti­tu­tions."

Hours be­fore the dis­cov­ery, prison of­fi­cers at the Port of Spain prison spot­ted a man at­tempt­ing to throw the pack­age over the wall near the in­ter­sec­tion of Gor­don and Pem­broke streets around 6.45 am.

The in­ci­dent caused the POA to re­new its call for a mod­ern CCTV sur­veil­lance sys­tem at the prison. The as­so­ci­a­tion's pub­lic re­la­tions of­fi­cer Kris Guerero said the as­so­ci­a­tion had been call­ing for up­grad­ed CCTV sys­tems, par­tic­u­lar­ly at Port-of-Spain Prison, for the past four years.

“CCTV can­not re­place trained of­fi­cers, prop­er staffing and in­tel­li­gence-led op­er­a­tions, but it can sig­nif­i­cant­ly en­hance their ef­fec­tive­ness,” Guerero said in a me­dia re­lease, adding that the in­ci­dent showed the ur­gent need for im­proved sur­veil­lance.

Guerero added that a mod­ern sys­tem would strength­en se­cu­ri­ty in­side and out­side prison walls, help of­fi­cers de­tect sus­pi­cious ac­tiv­i­ty and at­tempt­ed con­tra­band de­liv­er­ies, mon­i­tor in­ter­nal move­ments, pre­serve ev­i­dence and pro­vide in­tel­li­gence for in­ves­ti­ga­tions.