Jensen La Vende

Gen­er­al Sec­re­tary of the Prison Of­fi­cers As­so­ci­a­tion, Lester Lo­gie, says the pow­ers that be should use the in­tel­li­gence they have about mur­der plots stem­ming from the pris­ons and con­vert it to ev­i­dence.

Speak­ing with Guardian Me­dia at the as­so­ci­a­tion’s of­fice at Rail­way Road, Arou­ca, yes­ter­day, Lo­gie ex­pressed con­cerns over me­dia re­ports that high-rank­ing ju­di­cial of­fi­cers were tar­gets of crim­i­nals, lead­ing to a State of Emer­gency.

“If they have in­for­ma­tion like that, if it’s more than in­for­ma­tion, then they should act up­on it. And I wouldn’t want to be­lieve that is a rea­son for call­ing a State of Emer­gency. If they have in­for­ma­tion, they need to act on it. De­tain per­sons, in­ter­view them, and get to the bot­tom of the in­for­ma­tion or in­tel­li­gence that they have.”

Se­nior po­lice sources told Guardian Me­dia that there was a plot hatched to as­sas­si­nate a judge as well as a de­fence at­tor­ney. The plot al­so tar­get­ed ju­rors, with “scouts” re­port­ed­ly at­tend­ing a court hear­ing.

Po­lice said the case was al­most abort­ed af­ter the shoot­ers at­tend­ed court on a sec­ond day but were de­nied en­try. All at­tor­neys in­volved in the mat­ter were in­formed of the threat but were giv­en the as­sur­ance that they would be pro­tect­ed.

Days af­ter the court in­ci­dents, Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Al­lis­ter Gue­var­ro ad­vised the Gov­ern­ment to de­clare a State of Emer­gency and trans­ferred pris­on­ers from Build­ing 13 of the Max­i­mum Se­cu­ri­ty Prison, hous­ing them at De­fence Force bases in Ch­aguara­mas.

The main sus­pect in the plot had a 65-inch tele­vi­sion in his cell, which po­lice sources said was brought in ear­li­er this year. De­fence Min­is­ter Wayne Sturge told Guardian Me­dia last Fri­day that in­mates were us­ing the prison’s Wi-Fi to com­mu­ni­cate with oth­ers through on­line games played on the now-con­fis­cat­ed tele­vi­sion.

Lo­gie said that while he un­der­stands call­ing a State of Emer­gency is the pre­rog­a­tive of the State, he ques­tioned why that was not done when prison of­fi­cers were be­ing plot­ted against and sub­se­quent­ly mur­dered.

“Is like we out of the loop of the Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty,” Lo­gie said.

He called on the State to give prison of­fi­cers “a fight­ing chance” by amend­ing leg­is­la­tion that would al­low them to car­ry firearms when off du­ty.

“We call on the Gov­ern­ment to look at arm­ing all law en­force­ment of­fi­cers by amend­ing the Firearms Act to give them an op­por­tu­ni­ty to at least have a fight­ing chance to pro­tect them­selves. Be­cause as it goes now, these fel­lows are walk­ing around the place with AR-15s. We are just ask­ing for a hand­gun for pro­tec­tion, at least to give you a lit­tle chance. That is the re­al­i­ty we are fac­ing. So, we are hop­ing that the State will in­ter­vene and do right by these front­line of­fi­cers who have no pro­tec­tion.”

Calls and mes­sages to Gue­var­ro and act­ing Prison Com­mis­sion­er Car­los Cor­raspe re­gard­ing Lo­gie’s com­ments went unan­swered.