Prison officers seize cigarettes, marijuana, cellphone at PoS Prison

JENSEN LA VENDE

Se­nior Re­porter

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Prison of­fi­cers on Sat­ur­day morn­ing seized two car­tons of cig­a­rettes, a quan­ti­ty of mar­i­jua­na and a cell­phone and de­tained two pris­on­ers af­ter the items were thrown over the walls of the Port of Spain Prison.

Ac­cord­ing to a me­dia re­lease, around 5:10 a.m. on Sat­ur­day, the Prison Op­er­a­tions Cen­tre re­ceived in­for­ma­tion re­gard­ing a pack­age that had been thrown over the perime­ter wall. The of­fi­cers then searched the area where the pack­age was thrown and pris­on­ers in the con­vict­ed air­ing yard.

Prison of­fi­cers said the con­tra­band was found in the pos­ses­sion of two in­mates, who are ex­pect­ed to be charged with traf­fick­ing.

“The in­tro­duc­tion of pro­hib­it­ed items in­to cor­rec­tion­al fa­cil­i­ties pos­es a se­ri­ous threat to in­sti­tu­tion­al safe­ty and se­cu­ri­ty. Search ex­er­cis­es, in­tel­li­gence gath­er­ing and the alert­ness of of­fi­cers re­main crit­i­cal to de­tect­ing and re­mov­ing such items and pre­vent­ing their cir­cu­la­tion with­in the prison en­vi­ron­ment. The Trinidad and To­ba­go Prison Ser­vice re­mains res­olute in its ef­forts to safe­guard its cor­rec­tion­al in­sti­tu­tions and ad­dress at­tempts to in­tro­duce pro­hib­it­ed items in­to prison fa­cil­i­ties," the re­lease stat­ed.

This lat­est in­ci­dent takes place days af­ter prison of­fi­cers thwart­ed an at­tempt to have pro­hib­it­ed items thrown in­to the prison.

On Wednes­day, prison of­fi­cers spot­ted a man at­tempt­ing to throw con­tra­band items in­to the Port of Spain Prison. Hours lat­er, dur­ing a search, prison of­fi­cers found im­pro­vised weapons in the ceil­ing of the East­ern Cor­rec­tion­al Re­ha­bil­i­ta­tion Cen­tre (ECRC).

Prison of­fi­cers said six im­pro­vised weapons were dis­cov­ered con­cealed at the top of a cell dur­ing a search at the Hope Di­vi­sion around 10:45 am.

"Im­pro­vised weapons pose a se­ri­ous threat with­in the cor­rec­tion­al en­vi­ron­ment, with the po­ten­tial to en­dan­ger the safe­ty and se­cu­ri­ty of both in­mates and prison per­son­nel. Their de­tec­tion and re­moval re­main crit­i­cal to main­tain­ing or­der, re­duc­ing the risk of vi­o­lence and pre­serv­ing a safe and se­cure en­vi­ron­ment with­in cor­rec­tion­al fa­cil­i­ties," a re­lease stat­ed on Wednes­day.

Hours be­fore the dis­cov­ery, prison of­fi­cers at the Port of Spain prison spot­ted a man at­tempt­ing to throw the pack­age over the wall near the in­ter­sec­tion of Gor­don and Pem­broke streets around 6.45 am.

The in­ci­dent caused the POA to re­new its call for a mod­ern CCTV sur­veil­lance sys­tem at the prison. The as­so­ci­a­tion's 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.

“CCTV can­not re­place trained of­fi­cers, prop­er staffing and in­tel­li­gence-led op­er­a­tions, but it can sig­nif­i­cant­ly en­hance their ef­fec­tive­ness,” Guerero said in a me­dia re­lease, adding that the in­ci­dent showed the ur­gent need for im­proved sur­veil­lance.

Guerero added that 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.

Prison of­fi­cers said then that the vig­i­lance, thor­ough­ness, and at­ten­tion to de­tail of the of­fi­cers on du­ty led to the dis­cov­ery and stop­ping of con­tra­band en­ter­ing the prison.