Da­reece Po­lo

Se­nior Re­porter

da­reece.po­lo@guardian.co.tt

Prison Of­fi­cers As­so­ci­a­tion (POA) Pres­i­dent Ger­ard Gor­don is call­ing for leg­isla­tive amend­ments to the Law En­force­ment Safe­ty Act to man­date that mem­bers of the pro­tec­tive ser­vices ad­here to the strictest poli­cies when they re­ceive per­mis­sion to car­ry firearms.

Gor­don re­spond­ed to the Guardian Me­dia ex­clu­sive re­port on a video show­ing act­ing Pris­ons Com­mis­sion­er De­op­er­sad Ra­moutar re­lax­ing with a group of prison and po­lice of­fi­cers at a beach gath­er­ing at Cha­cachacare on May 6. Two as­sault ri­fles were shown dan­gling from a tree near­by.

De­spite the neg­a­tive at­ten­tion pro­tec­tive ser­vices have re­ceived on the heels of this video, and re­ports of a miss­ing Galil at the Teteron Bar­racks in Ch­aguara­mas, Gor­don said prison of­fi­cers still need per­mits for per­son­al firearms to pro­tect them­selves, as their lives re­main un­der con­tin­u­ous threat.

“Of­fi­cers who qual­i­fy must be giv­en the op­por­tu­ni­ty to pro­tect them­selves and we are ones that even sup­port year­ly com­pe­ten­cy-type en­gage­ment. So we are not just speak­ing about is­su­ing, in any sort of ir­re­spon­si­ble man­ner, firearms to all.

“What we are say­ing is that there should be a very ro­bust pol­i­cy de­vel­op­ment, leg­isla­tive frame­work in which, cer­tain­ly, af­ter the equal sign, is the safe­ty of the men and women who serve Trinidad and To­ba­go through the var­i­ous law en­force­ment agen­cies,” he said.

Tak­ing the op­por­tu­ni­ty to ad­vise firearm users to store these dan­ger­ous weapons in se­cure spaces, the POA pres­i­dent not­ed that T&T does not have leg­is­la­tion to fa­cil­i­tate the in­stal­la­tion of strong­box­es to se­cure guns in ve­hi­cles. This means legal­ly ob­tained guns ought to be kept on one­self, in a safe at home, or at a po­lice sta­tion.

“If the firearm is not on your per­son, it should be lodged at the near­est po­lice sta­tion for safe keep­ing. You can­not give some­one to hold it. You should not, un­der any cir­cum­stances, leave it in a ve­hi­cle,” he ad­vised.

Sev­en years ago, on March 11, 2016, for­mer POA pres­i­dent Ceron Richards had his firearm stolen in a break-in at his house. He was tem­porar­i­ly sus­pend­ed from the ser­vice as a re­sult.

Gor­don al­so lament­ed that more than 25 of­fi­cers have been slain dur­ing his 45 years in the prison ser­vice, some of whom were not on ac­tive du­ty.

He said prison of­fi­cers of vary­ing ranks have been the tar­get of crim­i­nal el­e­ments. It was 30 years ago, on Au­gust 14, 1993, a serv­ing pris­ons com­mis­sion­er was gunned down. Michael Her­cules was robbed and killed as he de­liv­ered bread to a char­i­ty. The late Patrick Man­ning was prime min­is­ter at that time.

How­ev­er, this sit­u­a­tion is not unique to one po­lit­i­cal par­ty as prison of­fi­cers have been killed un­der suc­ces­sive gov­ern­ments, in­clud­ing the Na­tion­al Al­liance for Re­con­struc­tion (NAR), Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress, Peo­ple’s Part­ner­ship and the cur­rent ad­min­is­tra­tion.

Guardian Me­dia con­tact­ed act­ing Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Mar­vin Gon­za­les on the video in­volv­ing Ra­moutar, but he de­clined com­ment. Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Fitzger­ald Hinds is out of the coun­try.