An­na-Lisa Paul

Se­nior Re­porter

an­na-lisa.paul@guardian.co.tt

Act­ing Pris­ons Com­mis­sion­er Hay­den Forde is warn­ing rogue of­fi­cers that they will be com­ing af­ter them and, once found guilty of any of­fence, will be sent to prison along­side their friends.

Speak­ing with the Sun­day Guardian yes­ter­day at Queen’s Park Sa­van­nah, Port-of-Spain, he ac­knowl­edged that the de­cay with­in the prison ser­vice did not hap­pen overnight and will take time to ad­dress.

How­ev­er, Forde made it clear that he will not tol­er­ate any wrong­do­ing un­der his lead­er­ship.

He vowed, “I want all those rogue of­fi­cers out. As far as I am con­cerned, a traf­fick­er should be blot­ted out from the cat­a­logue of the prison ser­vice.”

Ac­knowl­edg­ing the many chal­lenges faced, he ad­mit­ted, “There is no deny­ing that, and suc­ces­sive com­mis­sion­ers have nev­er de­nied the nu­mer­ous is­sues we con­front.”

Among these chal­lenges is the rise of crim­i­nal gangs, who have re­cent­ly or­gan­ised them­selves in­to a syn­di­cate al­leged­ly in­tent on desta­bil­is­ing the coun­try and as­sas­si­nat­ing top State of­fi­cials. This re­port­ed in­tel­li­gence prompt­ed the de­c­la­ra­tion of the on­go­ing State of Emer­gency (SoE) on Ju­ly 18.

Forde said, “One of the great­est is­sues we face is the pro­lif­er­a­tion of gangs, and be­cause we don’t have a lot of space, we are un­able to place per­sons or do prop­er sep­a­rat­ing of in­mates, so there­fore that pro­lif­er­a­tion will con­tin­ue.”

Forde ac­knowl­edged, “We have a lot of drone drops. We have throw-overs.”

De­spite this, he is de­ter­mined to ad­dress the chal­lenges. “We will get a lot of those rogue of­fi­cers and once the ju­di­cial sys­tem and the crim­i­nal jus­tice sys­tem works, we will en­sure that those of­fi­cers who were once prison of­fi­cers will go with their friends in their cells,” he added.

Fol­low­ing the re­lo­ca­tion of sev­er­al high-pro­file in­mates from the Max­i­mum Se­cu­ri­ty Prison (MSP) to the Teteron Bar­racks at the start of the SoE, the act­ing of­fi­cial de­scribed the cur­rent at­mos­phere per­vad­ing the prison ser­vice as “tu­mul­tuous”.

He de­scribed the mood at the MSP as “pret­ty qui­et”, but re­mind­ed the pub­lic that “qui­et doesn’t nec­es­sar­i­ly mean calm”.

Con­firm­ing the prison ser­vice re­mained on high alert, Forde said, “They could be wait­ing for word to do some­thing, but I want to en­cour­age my of­fi­cers, the fam­i­ly of the T&T Prison Ser­vice, to per­se­vere. We are do­ing things in the back­ground, and we will en­sure that we con­tin­ue to work in a safe en­vi­ron­ment, as chal­leng­ing as it may be.”

With the in­ten­tion of pe­ti­tion­ing Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Roger Alexan­der for leg­isla­tive and ju­di­cial sup­port to hold those turn-key of­fi­cers ac­count­able, Forde urged the pub­lic to trust them, re­it­er­at­ing, “We will work as­sid­u­ous­ly for that. We are go­ing be­hind them and we will get them.”

Ad­dress­ing rogue of­fi­cers, he said, “Don’t think for one minute that you are go­ing to go in a di­vi­sion where we have oth­er ser­vice per­son­nel. You cause us harm and hurt. You are caus­ing the so­ci­ety harm and hurt. You will go with your friends be­cause you are gang mem­bers. The mere fact that you af­fil­i­ate with them, you are gang mem­bers, and we will treat you as such.”

Point­ing to con­ti­nu­ity in pol­i­cy plan­ning and im­ple­men­ta­tion that be­gan un­der his pre­de­ces­sor, Car­los Cor­raspe, who went on over 200 days of va­ca­tion leave start­ing Au­gust 7, Forde ex­plained, “The good thing about Mr Cor­raspe is that when he as­sumed of­fice, he had his ex­ec­u­tive with him and the vast ma­jor­i­ty of de­ci­sions were made in col­lab­o­ra­tion as an ex­ec­u­tive.”

He added, “We are work­ing with our part­ners to en­sure that the worst of the worst of our in­mates can­not have the op­por­tu­ni­ty to cause harm and hurt to our cit­i­zen­ry, be­cause we know that that spir­it of fear is out there.

“We know that per­sons are pet­ri­fied. They are un­able to go any­where with­out look­ing over their shoul­ders, and we will con­tin­ue to work. We will work hard un­til I demit of­fice. I as­sure you I will give every­thing I have with­in me to en­sure that the pub­lic safe­ty and the pub­lic con­fi­dence in our ser­vice are re­stored.”

He said prison of­fi­cers con­tin­ued to op­er­ate un­der ex­treme stress as they leave their fam­i­lies dai­ly, with­out any guar­an­tee they will re­turn safe­ly at the end of the day.

“It is a charged and trau­mat­ic en­vi­ron­ment we work in,” he stat­ed, but he urged peo­ple to ac­cept that with God’s help and guid­ance, they would ac­com­plish the feat of cast­ing rogue of­fi­cers aside.

Ap­plaud­ing the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice (TTPS) for host­ing a Wor­ship, Word and War­fare Prayer Fo­rum yes­ter­day, as they prayed for the coun­try, Forde said the na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty forces were be­ing called to fight both the phys­i­cal and spir­i­tu­al de­mon­ic forces that were be­hind every­thing that is hap­pen­ing in the coun­try now.

“Yes, we un­der­stand that per­sons are com­mit­ting crimes. They are do­ing a myr­i­ad of things that are bring­ing harm and hurt to our so­ci­ety, but we have to recog­nise that God has a ma­jor part to play in the fight against crime. As hu­man be­ings, we can al­low God to lead us, to treat with sev­er­al is­sues.”