Families face anxious wait for SoE detainees outside ECRC

Shane Su­perville

Se­nior Re­porter

shane.su­[email protected]

The at­mos­phere out­side the East­ern Cor­rec­tion­al Re­ha­bil­i­ta­tion Cen­tre (ECRC) in San­ta Rosa was one of qui­et, cau­tious op­ti­mism yes­ter­day, as rel­a­tives of peo­ple held un­der Pre­ven­tive De­ten­tion Or­ders (PDOs) wait­ed through­out the morn­ing for news of their loved ones’ re­lease.

When Guardian Me­dia vis­it­ed the fa­cil­i­ty off the Churchill-Roo­sevelt High­way in San­ta Rosa, ve­hi­cles lined the ac­cess road while heav­i­ly armed po­lice of­fi­cers and prison per­son­nel mon­i­tored the gath­er­ing fam­i­lies.

Sev­er­al rel­a­tives de­clined to speak with re­porters, with some warn­ing of le­gal ac­tion if pho­tographs of their loved ones were pub­lished.

How­ev­er, by 1.21 p.m., sources said no de­tainees had been re­leased from the fa­cil­i­ty, de­spite the grow­ing queue of ve­hi­cles. Some rel­a­tives left af­ter wait­ing for more than an hour with­out re­ceiv­ing any in­for­ma­tion.

Sources said de­tainees housed at the Youth Train­ing Cen­tre (YTC) and the Women’s Prison in Arou­ca were among the first to be re­leased. As of yes­ter­day af­ter­noon, on­ly a hand­ful of de­tainees had re­port­ed­ly been freed from the ECRC.

Guardian Me­dia sought an of­fi­cial re­sponse from the Trinidad and To­ba­go Po­lice Ser­vice’s Cor­po­rate Com­mu­ni­ca­tions Unit. How­ev­er, a spokesper­son de­clined to dis­close when de­tainees would be re­leased or how the process would be man­aged, cit­ing se­cu­ri­ty con­cerns.

“Re­veal­ing that in­for­ma­tion would put some of these de­tainees at risk and com­pro­mise se­cu­ri­ty, which we can­not af­ford to do,” the spokesper­son said.

An­oth­er se­nior po­lice source al­so de­clined to pro­vide de­tails, cit­ing sim­i­lar con­cerns.

De­spite this, oth­er sources main­tained that the re­lease process start­ed yes­ter­day and would con­tin­ue in­to next week.

On Wednes­day evening, the T&T Prison Ser­vice al­so an­nounced via so­cial me­dia that vis­its to the ECRC and all fa­cil­i­ties with­in the Gold­en Grove Prison com­pound, in­clud­ing the Women’s Prison, Re­mand Prison, Ex­tend­ed Re­mand Fa­cil­i­ty and Gold­en Grove Prison, would be tem­porar­i­ly sus­pend­ed from yes­ter­day. Ac­cord­ing to the no­tice, vis­i­ta­tion is sched­uled to re­sume on Sep­tem­ber 17.

At the ECRC, of­fi­cers en­forced strict se­cu­ri­ty mea­sures. Masked prison of­fi­cers spoke with rel­a­tives, col­lect­ed per­son­al in­for­ma­tion, pho­tographed vis­i­tors and, along with po­lice of­fi­cers, con­duct­ed ve­hi­cle search­es be­fore di­rect­ing them to join a steadi­ly grow­ing queue along an ac­cess road op­po­site the fa­cil­i­ty.

A steady stream of marked po­lice and prison ve­hi­cles en­tered the com­pound from the high­way, nav­i­gat­ing a se­ries of bar­ri­cades erect­ed to slow traf­fic ap­proach­ing the cen­tre.

Short­ly be­fore 1 pm, po­lice in­struct­ed rel­a­tives and Guardian Me­dia per­son­nel to move their ve­hi­cles from both sides of the ac­cess road and form a sin­gle line to avoid ob­struct­ing trucks us­ing the route.

Dur­ing the vis­it, two at­tor­neys ar­rived and briefly spoke with of­fi­cers sta­tioned at a tent near the bar­ri­cades be­fore leav­ing. They de­part­ed be­fore Guardian Me­dia could ap­proach them for com­ment.

As of 2 pm, one rel­a­tive said fam­i­ly mem­bers were still await­ing guid­ance from of­fi­cers and re­mained un­cer­tain whether their loved one would be re­leased.

Mean­while, po­lice sources in the North East­ern and North-Cen­tral di­vi­sions said of­fi­cers would main­tain height­ened pa­trols and vis­i­bil­i­ty across sev­er­al com­mu­ni­ties to min­imise the risk of re­tal­ia­to­ry vi­o­lence or crim­i­nal ac­tiv­i­ty fol­low­ing the de­tainees’ re­lease.

“Oth­ers may be processed and charged be­fore they are re­leased, but for now we have to be ob­ser­vant and mind­ful of the sit­u­a­tion on the ground over the week­end and in­to next week,” one North East­ern Di­vi­sion of­fi­cer said.

Guardian Me­dia al­so sought con­fir­ma­tion from the TTPS Cor­po­rate Com­mu­ni­ca­tions Unit on the num­ber of PDOs is­sued dur­ing the State of Emer­gency. How­ev­er, no re­sponse was re­ceived up to press time. On Ju­ly 2, au­thor­i­ties re­port­ed that 406 PDOs had been is­sued.

Ef­forts to ob­tain com­ment from Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Roger Alexan­der were al­so un­suc­cess­ful up to press time.