CAMILLE CLARKE

A num­ber of new strate­gies were dis­cussed dur­ing a closed-door two-hour meet­ing be­tween the Prison Of­fi­cers As­so­ci­a­tion, com­man­ders of the Po­lice and Prison Ser­vice and the Min­is­ter of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Ed­mund Dil­lon last night to pro­tect of­fi­cers whose lives are at risk.

The meet­ing fol­lows a po­ten­tial­ly risky sit­u­a­tion where a num­ber of of­fi­cers stayed away from work at the week­end fol­low­ing the brazen day­light mur­der of their col­league Dav­en­dra Boodooram who was shot dead while stuck in traf­fic a short dis­tance from the Port-of-Spain prison last Fri­day.

Boodooram mur­der came on the heels of re­ports of abuse by pris­on­ers af­ter a search at the prison.

The meet­ing, which was held at the Min­istry’s Tem­ple Court of­fices, be­gan at 5 pm, an hour lat­er than the sched­uled start, and end­ed at 7 pm.

Com­ment­ing to the me­dia camped out­side, Pres­i­dent of the Pris­ons Of­fi­cers As­so­ci­a­tion Ceron Richards said a num­ber of strate­gies were dis­cussed to pro­tect the lives of prison of­fi­cers.

Richards and oth­er mem­bers of the as­so­ci­a­tion, Dil­lon, act­ing Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice Stephen Williams, Pris­ons Com­mis­sion­er Ger­ard Wil­son met at Tem­ple Court.

Richards said the meet­ing was a con­tin­u­a­tion of se­cu­ri­ty talks which be­gan last year af­ter oth­er of­fi­cers were killed in the line of du­ty.

Among the rec­om­men­da­tions, the As­so­ci­a­tion had made in the past were for prison of­fi­cers un­der threat to be is­sued with firearms while off-du­ty and for of­fi­cers who live in high-risk ar­eas be al­lo­cat­ed State hous­ing.

“We were ex­pe­ri­enc­ing a flow of crim­i­nal be­hav­iour ac­tiv­i­ties against prison of­fi­cers and we met and we dis­cussed de­vel­op­ing strate­gies and we are con­tin­u­ing dis­cus­sions and tight­en­ing ar­eas and more in­no­v­a­tive ideas to add to the pot,” he said.

He said the POA was com­mit­ted to pro­tect­ing the of­fi­cers and no ef­fort would be spared to pro­tect of­fi­cers so they can do their job.

Richards said dis­cus­sions from last year on leg­is­la­tion to pro­tect the prison of­fi­cers would con­tin­ue.

“The jour­ney con­tin­ues there has been a gen­er­al lack of re­spect for law en­force­ment which re­sults in the sit­u­a­tion. We have to con­tin­ue meet­ing and we have to do what is nec­es­sary and we dub this meet­ing as a con­tin­u­a­tion and we are do­ing this more in­tense­ly,” he said.

Richards said he heard re­ports of prison of­fi­cers stay­ing away from du­ty at the Port-of-Spain Prison but did not have any num­bers.

Wil­son said there were a lot of pos­i­tives which came out of the meet­ing along with a num­ber of strate­gies.