Jensen La Vende

Se­nior Re­porter

jensen.lavende@guardian.co.tt

Pres­i­dent of the Prison Of­fi­cers’ As­so­ci­a­tion of Trinidad and To­ba­go Ger­ard Gor­don says the at­tempt­ed mur­der of an of­fi­cer on Fri­day night sym­bol­is­es that the coun­try is in cri­sis.

In a me­dia re­lease short­ly af­ter the at­tempt­ed shoot­ing, Gor­don post­ed on so­cial me­dia a call for of­fi­cers to be vig­i­lant and a re­minder to the au­thor­i­ties to pro­tect prison of­fi­cers.

“Let us be clear: Prison Of­fi­cers are un­der at­tack—and not just by crim­i­nals, but by the si­lence, in­ac­tion, and de­lay of those elect­ed to pro­tect and lead. The As­so­ci­a­tion has tak­en the State to court over the is­sue of safe­ty and se­cu­ri­ty, a mat­ter that has dragged on for near­ly a decade. And yet, even as of­fi­cers are gunned down, hunt­ed, and ter­ror­ized, no mean­ing­ful change has been im­ple­ment­ed.”

He added: “We re­cent­ly re­mind­ed the Gov­ern­ment, via a for­mal state­ment, of our sup­port for the for­mer Op­po­si­tion Leader and now Prime Min­is­ter’s call to arm law en­force­ment of­fi­cers and pro­tect their well-be­ing. In that same com­mu­ni­ca­tion, we pro­posed again, the Law En­force­ment Of­fi­cer Safe­ty Act, which of­fers a struc­tured path to ad­dress these sys­temic fail­ures. But tonight’s at­tack is yet an­oth­er bru­tal re­minder that time is run­ning out.”

Po­lice re­port­ed that around 8.20 pm, prison of­fi­cer Govin­dra Bal­go­b­in, who worked at the Max­i­mum Se­cu­ri­ty Prison, was head­ing home when he was am­bushed and shot along Or­ange Grove Road.

Gun­men in a Nis­sa Wingroad pulled along­side him and opened fire, hit­ting him twice, once in the leg and once in the arm.

In their haste to es­cape, the dri­ver lost con­trol of the get­away car and crashed in­to a light pole along the Churchill Roo­sevelt High­way. One of the at­tack­ers was thrown out of the ve­hi­cle while an­oth­er was ar­rest­ed short­ly af­ter. A hand­gun was re­cov­ered in the get­away ve­hi­cle.

Gor­don says while he and the as­so­ci­a­tion are grate­ful that Bal­go­b­in sur­vived the failed as­sas­si­na­tion, he is dis­turbed by the at­tack.

“This is not an iso­lat­ed in­ci­dent. Just shy of three dozen prison of­fi­cers—fa­thers, sons, hus­bands, and friends—have been bru­tal­ly mur­dered in this coun­try, with the State do­ing lit­tle to noth­ing to ar­rest this dis­gust­ing trend. These mur­ders are not sta­tis­tics. They are re­al peo­ple, with griev­ing fam­i­lies and shat­tered homes, and the in­dif­fer­ence shown to their plight is as painful as the crimes them­selves.”

He called on the pow­ers that be to ad­dress the con­cerns of prison of­fi­cers and not to ig­nore their plight.

“We im­plore—no, de­mand—in the strongest pos­si­ble terms, that the Gov­ern­ment stop ig­nor­ing the dire re­al­i­ty faced by the na­tion’s Prison Of­fi­cers. Stop treat­ing us like dis­pos­able as­sets. Stop drag­ging your feet on promis­es of pro­tec­tion. Stop un­der­es­ti­mat­ing the pain and pres­sure that our fam­i­lies live with every sin­gle day. This can­not con­tin­ue. The next of­fi­cer may not be as lucky. The next child may lose a par­ent. The next wife may be left to bury her hus­band.

The blood of our of­fi­cers can­not con­tin­ue to be ig­nored.”

Dur­ing the prison ser­vice’s sports and fam­i­ly day last month act­ing Pris­ons Com­mis­sion­er Car­los Cor­raspe com­mend­ed his of­fi­cers for their ded­i­ca­tion to du­ty, af­ter they were threat­ened fol­low­ing a search at the Port of Spain Prison.

He re­mind­ed the in­mates that their pres­ence at the pris­ons was not by in­vi­ta­tion but by court or­der, and he and his of­fi­cers will main­tain or­der with­in the con­fines of all pris­ons, as is their man­date.

“I say to the na­tion­al com­mu­ni­ty, and I say to the in­mate pop­u­la­tion, no­body brought a sin­gle in­mate to the con­fines of the prison by virtue of an in­vi­ta­tion. There is a war­rant that is is­sued that com­mands the com­mis­sion­er to hold you there. And while you are there, there shall be law and or­der main­tained.

“We will con­duct our du­ties law­ful­ly. We will search every nook and cran­ny of every prison. We com­mand that space. We shall main­tain that space. And if it comes to threats to our of­fi­cers, I want you to know that we will stand firm. We will stand to­geth­er to en­sure that those threats do not come to pass.”