The dis­cov­ery of a loaded pis­tol among the prison pop­u­la­tion at the Max­i­mum Se­cu­ri­ty Prison (MSP), Gold­en Grove, Arou­ca, on Wednes­day, is caus­ing alarm among prison of­fi­cers.

The of­fi­cers are now seek­ing as­sur­ances about their safe­ty from top na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty of­fi­cials, even as search­es in­ten­si­fied at the fa­cil­i­ty yes­ter­day.

“One doesn’t have to look too far back to the events of 2015, with that es­cape from the Port-of-Spain Prison,” Prison Of­fi­cers’ As­so­ci­a­tion pres­i­dent Ger­ard Gor­don said.

He re­called that in that in­ci­dent, in­mates were “shoot­ing them­selves out of the prison in broad day­light.”

Wednes­day’s dis­cov­ery of a loaded 9 mm pis­tol with sev­en rounds of am­mu­ni­tion dur­ing a lock­down has left of­fi­cials baf­fled, with some sug­gest­ing that ad­vanced drone tech­nol­o­gy is be­ing used by crim­i­nal el­e­ments out­side the prison to arm their in­car­cer­at­ed co­horts.

Gor­don said, “The air space in and around MSP should be re­strict­ed, but it is not. The is­sue of find­ing firearms with­in the walls of the prison is not a for­eign con­cept.”

He dis­missed claims that a prison of­fi­cer could have been re­spon­si­ble, point­ing out that the num­ber of of­fi­cers cur­rent­ly sus­pend­ed or be­fore the courts for of­fences is enough ev­i­dence they are se­ri­ous about hold­ing per­sons to ac­count.

“Of all arms of law en­force­ment, the prison and the Prison Ser­vice has been one who has at­tempt­ed and con­tin­ues to ad­dress traf­fick­ing by of­fi­cers, or even ser­vants of the state, or even civil­ians who en­ter the prison,” he said.

Gor­don said rou­tine and spon­ta­neous search­es are part of the MSP se­cu­ri­ty ap­pa­ra­tus. He said while tech­nol­o­gy is ad­vanc­ing dai­ly, prison au­thor­i­ties con­tin­ue to op­er­ate in di­lap­i­dat­ed con­di­tions with fail­ing in­fra­struc­ture and equip­ment.

He rec­om­mend­ed the in­stal­la­tion of a geo-fence around the prison like the one in­stalled at the Pi­ar­co In­ter­na­tion­al Air­port.

“That is what would in­hib­it or pre­vent any er­rant drone pi­lot from hav­ing a drone en­ter the air­space in and around what­ev­er fa­cil­i­ty you need to keep se­cure,” he said.