Co­or­di­nat­ed ex­er­cis­es by po­lice and prison of­fi­cials at the Gold­en Grove Prison in Arou­ca be­tween Tues­day night and yes­ter­day morn­ing have re­sult­ed in the seizure of elec­tron­ic de­vices and im­pro­vised weapons, as well as a knife and a quan­ti­ty of nar­cotics.

Of­fi­cials said the joint op­er­a­tion by of­fi­cers of the Prison Emer­gency Re­sponse Unit and the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice be­tween 10 pm on No­vem­ber 4 and 2.30 am on No­vem­ber 5 at the Ex­ter­nal Re­mand Fa­cil­i­ty and the re­fur­bished Gold­en Grove Prison was yet an­oth­er step by the au­thor­i­ties to stem the flow of con­tra­band in­to the fa­cil­i­ty.

Dur­ing the raid, of­fi­cers seized 14 cell­phones, 12 SIM cards, ten USB ca­bles, 15 cell­phone charg­ers, five head­sets, a quan­ti­ty of mar­i­jua­na, a quan­ti­ty of loose cig­a­rettes, sev­er­al packs of wrap­ping pa­per, a one-litre soft drink bot­tle with a false bot­tom, three im­pro­vised weapons, a flick knife, and a sil­ver spoon.

Eight in­mates are ex­pect­ed to be for­mal­ly charged in the com­ing weeks for var­i­ous of­fences aris­ing out of the op­er­a­tion.

The ex­er­cise was co­or­di­nat­ed by Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Al­lis­ter Gue­var­ro, Deputy Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Suzette Mar­tin, act­ing Pris­ons Com­mis­sion­er Hay­den Forde, and Se­nior Pris­ons Su­per­in­ten­dent Lee Davis.

Po­lice and prison of­fi­cials said they were com­mit­ted to main­tain­ing the safe­ty and se­cu­ri­ty of all cor­rec­tion­al fa­cil­i­ties and pledged to con­tin­ue car­ry­ing out joint op­er­a­tions aimed at elim­i­nat­ing the en­try and use of con­tra­band with­in the prison sys­tem.

—An­na-Lisa Paul