An­na-Lisa Paul

Se­nior Re­porter

an­na-lisa.paul@guardian.co.tt

The Prison Of­fi­cers As­so­ci­a­tion (POA) has praised Tues­day night’s co­or­di­nat­ed raid at the Max­i­mum Se­cu­ri­ty Prison (MSP), call­ing it “ex­cel­lent work” by po­lice and prison of­fi­cials in re­sponse to a se­ri­ous threat.

The four-hour joint op­er­a­tion, con­duct­ed be­tween 7 pm and 11 pm, was led by Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice Al­lis­ter Gue­var­ro and act­ing Pris­ons Com­mis­sion­er Car­los Cor­rapse, with co­or­di­na­tion by Deputy Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice (In­tel­li­gence and In­ves­ti­ga­tions) Suzette Mar­tin and As­sis­tant Com­mis­sion­er of Pris­ons Lee Davis.

POA pres­i­dent Ger­ard Gor­don wel­comed the op­er­a­tion, de­scrib­ing it as time­ly and nec­es­sary in light of a voice note cir­cu­lat­ed on so­cial me­dia Mon­day, which threat­ened se­nior law en­force­ment of­fi­cials by name.

“We are tak­ing it one day at a time now. As prison of­fi­cers, we are hap­py that the re­sponse to the voice note was swift and de­ci­sive,” Gor­don said.

Dur­ing the raid, sev­er­al prison cells were searched, re­sult­ing in the re­cov­ery of sev­er­al mo­bile phones and ac­ces­sories, cannabis, cig­a­rette pack­ages, and hand­writ­ten notes—some of which are be­ing analysed for in­tel­li­gence. Au­thor­i­ties be­lieve the ma­te­ri­als are linked to the threats out­lined in the voice note.

In the record­ing, the speak­er ref­er­enced Robert “R Man” Paul, al­leged leader of the Re­sis­tance Gang, and urged as­so­ciates to “purge the place” by tar­get­ing po­lice and prison of­fi­cers. Paul and oth­er high-pro­file in­mates were re­lo­cat­ed from MSP to Tetetron Bar­racks in Ch­aguara­mas on Ju­ly 18, the first day of the State of Emer­gency.

Gor­don said the POA sup­ports such ac­tion but stressed the need for prop­er ac­com­mo­da­tion for prison of­fi­cers de­ployed to Tetetron. He re­vealed that at least one am­bu­lance crew was forced to sleep in their ve­hi­cle on Mon­day night due to the lack of fa­cil­i­ties.

“I want to make it abun­dant­ly clear—we have no is­sue with the State do­ing what it must to pro­tect so­ci­ety. But there must be prop­er arrange­ments in place for our of­fi­cers. They are not pris­on­ers,” Gor­don said.

He called on CoP Gue­var­ro and Com­mis­sion­er Cor­rapse to “have an ob­jec­tive look” at the cur­rent staff ac­com­mo­da­tions.

Gor­don ac­knowl­edged the long-stand­ing chal­lenges fac­ing the prison ser­vice, in­clud­ing staff short­ages, de­te­ri­o­rat­ing in­fra­struc­ture, a lack of ve­hi­cles, and in­ad­e­quate uni­forms and equip­ment.

“De­spite these peren­ni­al is­sues, we re­main hope­ful—es­pe­cial­ly now, giv­en the height­ened pub­lic at­ten­tion—that the State will do what is right for the Prison Ser­vice,” he said.

He re­mind­ed the pub­lic that threats and vi­o­lence against prison of­fi­cers are not new. Over the past two decades, ap­prox­i­mate­ly 32 of­fi­cers have been killed.

“This is our dai­ly ex­pe­ri­ence—be­ing tar­get­ed, be­ing un­der siege. We con­tin­ue to en­cour­age our of­fi­cers to be ex­treme­ly vig­i­lant, es­pe­cial­ly out­side the prison walls,” Gor­don said.

The mul­ti-agency op­er­a­tion in­volved units from the TTPS, in­clud­ing the North­ern Di­vi­sion CID, North Cen­tral Di­vi­sion Task Force Area East, crime scene in­ves­ti­ga­tors, and a spe­cial­ist TTPS unit. The goal, au­thor­i­ties said, was to pre­vent any in­ter­nal com­mu­ni­ca­tion that could be linked to the ex­ter­nal threat.

CoP Gue­var­ro said the raid re­flect­ed the TTPS’ con­tin­ued vig­i­lance and strong part­ner­ship with the Prison Ser­vice.

“It un­der­scores our un­wa­ver­ing com­mit­ment to safe­guard­ing law en­force­ment per­son­nel and for­ti­fy­ing the coun­try’s cor­rec­tion­al in­fra­struc­ture against il­lic­it ac­tiv­i­ty,” he said.