Prison officer under PDO after prison search

A prison of­fi­cer at­tached to the Port-of-Spain Prison has been placed un­der a Pre­ven­ta­tive De­ten­tion Or­der (PDO) af­ter be­ing ar­rest­ed on sus­pi­cion of fa­cil­i­tat­ing the in­tro­duc­tion of pro­hib­it­ed items in­to a cor­rec­tion­al fa­cil­i­ty.

Ac­cord­ing to a me­dia re­lease, the of­fi­cer was ar­rest­ed on May 1 while on du­ty at the prison af­ter of­fi­cers con­duct­ed a search of his lock­er and found sev­er­al pro­hib­it­ed ar­ti­cles.

A month be­fore, the de­ten­tion of prison of­fi­cer Keron Lewis was gazetted. It was said Lewis was iden­ti­fied as a key fa­cil­i­ta­tor in the co­or­di­na­tion of crim­i­nal ac­tiv­i­ties be­tween in­car­cer­at­ed in­di­vid­u­als and ex­ter­nal ac­tors.

The re­lease stat­ed that the lat­est of­fi­cer had been un­der sur­veil­lance be­fore the ar­rest. In­ves­ti­ga­tors re­port­ed­ly re­ceived in­tel­li­gence al­leg­ing that the of­fi­cer was in­volved in fa­cil­i­tat­ing pro­hib­it­ed items to in­mates with­in the prison sys­tem.

Po­lice said the in­mates were al­leged­ly co­or­di­nat­ing crim­i­nal ac­tiv­i­ties from in­side the prison.

The op­er­a­tion was co­or­di­nat­ed by Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice Al­lis­ter Gue­var­ro, Com­mis­sion­er of Pris­ons Car­los Cor­rapse and Deputy Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice Suzette Mar­tin.

The re­lease did not state the type of pro­hib­it­ed ar­ti­cles that were dis­cov­ered dur­ing the search. It al­so did not in­di­cate whether any charges had been laid against the of­fi­cer up to the time of the re­lease.

A Pre­ven­ta­tive De­ten­tion Or­der al­lows au­thor­i­ties to de­tain a per­son for in­ves­tiga­tive and se­cu­ri­ty pur­pos­es while in­quiries con­tin­ue.

The ar­rest forms part of on­go­ing ef­forts by law en­force­ment and prison au­thor­i­ties to ad­dress the move­ment of pro­hib­it­ed items in­to cor­rec­tion­al fa­cil­i­ties and the use of pris­ons to co­or­di­nate crim­i­nal ac­tiv­i­ty.

The Port-of-Spain Prison has been the fo­cus of sev­er­al op­er­a­tions in re­cent years aimed at in­ter­cept­ing con­tra­band and iden­ti­fy­ing per­sons sus­pect­ed of in­volve­ment in il­le­gal ac­tiv­i­ties with­in the prison sys­tem.

Of­fi­cials have re­peat­ed­ly stat­ed that in­tel­li­gence-led op­er­a­tions are be­ing used to tar­get the move­ment of pro­hib­it­ed items in­to pris­ons and to dis­rupt com­mu­ni­ca­tion be­tween in­mates and crim­i­nal net­works out­side cor­rec­tion­al fa­cil­i­ties.

Po­lice and prison of­fi­cials said in­ves­ti­ga­tions in­to the mat­ter are con­tin­u­ing.