Prison officer ordered detained under SoE PDO

A prison of­fi­cer is among the lat­est batch of peo­ple who were served with Pre­ven­tive De­ten­tion Or­ders (PDOs) un­der the State of Emer­gency (SoE).

The de­ten­tion of prison of­fi­cer Keron Lewis was gazetted yes­ter­day, along with or­ders for 23 oth­er peo­ple, all signed off on by Min­is­ter of Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty Roger Alexan­der.

Ac­cord­ing to the PDO, Lewis, al­so known as “Diesel,” has al­leged­ly been iden­ti­fied as a key fa­cil­i­ta­tor in the co­or­di­na­tion of crim­i­nal ac­tiv­i­ties be­tween in­car­cer­at­ed in­di­vid­u­als and ex­ter­nal ac­tors. It is said he is ac­tive­ly in­volved in the traf­fick­ing of pro­hib­it­ed ar­ti­cles in­to a cor­rec­tion­al fa­cil­i­ty and trans­mit­ting in­struc­tions and or­ders from in­car­cer­at­ed per­sons. The PDO said the de­tainee’s ac­tiv­i­ties fa­cil­i­tat­ed the ex­pan­sion of or­gan­ised crime, in­clud­ing kid­nap­pings and vi­o­lent of­fences, which ex­posed the pub­lic to sig­nif­i­cant risk of harm.

Lewis is the first prison of­fi­cer to be served with a PDO un­der the cur­rent SoE. In the last SoE, prison su­per­vi­sor Garth Gua­da was al­so de­tained.

Two po­lice of­fi­cers, Pra­manan Ra­j­path and Ste­fon Khan, have al­so been or­dered de­tained so far un­der the cur­rent SoE.

Ra­j­path, who is at­tached to the Cen­tral Di­vi­sion, was among 11 peo­ple or­dered de­tained on March 16. Ra­j­path was iden­ti­fied for sup­ply­ing op­er­a­tional in­tel­li­gence to or­gan­ised crime groups, cre­at­ing a risk of im­mi­nent at­tacks be­tween ri­val gangs us­ing high-pow­ered firearms in pub­lic spaces.

Khan, who was or­dered de­tained on March 27, is al­leged to have been util­is­ing his of­fi­cial po­si­tion to pro­vide ac­cess to polic­ing fa­cil­i­ties to a mem­ber of a gang. It is al­leged that while on du­ty re­cent­ly, Khan tam­pered with nar­cot­ic ex­hibits linked to the Venezue­lan-based gang Tren de Aragua. It claimed he then met with a known gang mem­ber and held an ex­change.

“The de­tainee’s ac­tions cre­ate a sig­nif­i­cant risk to pub­lic safe­ty, as his as­so­ci­a­tion with OCG mem­bers and the trans­fer of items from po­lice cus­tody and polic­ing in­for­ma­tion, en­dan­ger law en­force­ment and the broad­er pub­lic,” the PDO said.

Mem­bers of the 9 Gang, 6 Gang, 7 Gang and Ras­ta City gang were al­so among those or­dered de­tained un­der PDOs gazetted yes­ter­day.

The de­tainees are ex­pect­ed to be held at the East­ern Cor­rec­tion­al Re­ha­bil­i­ta­tion Cen­tre in Ari­ma.