Man flees after trying to throw package into prison

A man fled from the Port-of-Spain Prison on Tues­day morn­ing af­ter prison of­fi­cers caught him at­tempt­ing to throw a pack­age over the fa­cil­i­ty’s perime­ter wall.

The Trinidad and To­ba­go Prison Ser­vice said of­fi­cers spot­ted the uniden­ti­fied man at­tempt­ing to throw the pack­age over the wall near the in­ter­sec­tion of Gor­don and Pem­broke streets at about 6:45 a.m.

As of­fi­cers ap­proached, the man, who was wear­ing a blue top and cream-coloured long pants, fled on foot with the pack­age still in his pos­ses­sion.

The pack­age was not in­tro­duced in­to the prison com­pound.

The in­ci­dent has prompt­ed the Prison Of­fi­cers’ As­so­ci­a­tion (POA) to re­new its call for a mod­ern CCTV sur­veil­lance sys­tem at the prison.

POA pub­lic re­la­tions of­fi­cer Kris Guerero said the as­so­ci­a­tion had been call­ing for up­grad­ed CCTV sys­tems, par­tic­u­lar­ly at Port-of-Spain Prison, for the past four years.

Guerero said a mod­ern sys­tem would strength­en se­cu­ri­ty in­side and out­side prison walls, help of­fi­cers de­tect sus­pi­cious ac­tiv­i­ty and at­tempt­ed con­tra­band de­liv­er­ies, mon­i­tor in­ter­nal move­ments, pre­serve ev­i­dence and pro­vide in­tel­li­gence for in­ves­ti­ga­tions.

He said the re­cent in­ci­dents in­volv­ing peo­ple throw­ing or at­tempt­ing to throw con­tra­band over the prison walls showed the ur­gent need for im­proved sur­veil­lance.

“CCTV can­not re­place trained of­fi­cers, prop­er staffing and in­tel­li­gence-led op­er­a­tions, but it can sig­nif­i­cant­ly en­hance their ef­fec­tive­ness,” Guerero said.

The Prison Ser­vice warned that traf­fick­ing or at­tempt­ing to traf­fic pro­hib­it­ed ar­ti­cles in­to or out of a prison is an of­fence un­der the Pris­ons Act, Chap. 13:01, as amend­ed by the Mis­cel­la­neous Pro­vi­sions (Law En­force­ment Of­fi­cers) Act, No. 25 of 2019.

It urged the pub­lic not to at­tempt to smug­gle pro­hib­it­ed ar­ti­cles in­to pris­ons or cor­rec­tion­al fa­cil­i­ties, warn­ing that of­fend­ers could face ar­rest and pros­e­cu­tion.

The Prison Ser­vice said it would con­tin­ue work­ing with the Trinidad and To­ba­go Po­lice Ser­vice and oth­er law en­force­ment agen­cies to de­tect, in­ves­ti­gate and pros­e­cute such of­fences.