Rhon­dor Dowlat

All pris­ons through­out T&T are cur­rent­ly on a "lock­down" as se­cu­ri­ty mea­sures are in­creased, in­clud­ing the in­stal­la­tion of body scan­ners.

The move comes on the heels of Fri­day's prison break in which pris­on­ers Al­lan "Scan­ny" Mar­tin, Has­san Atwell and Christo­pher Sel­by shot their way to free­dom from the Port-of-Spain Prison, Fred­er­ick Street, Port-of-Spain, killing po­lice of­fi­cer Sher­man May­nard as they did so.

A well-placed prison source yes­ter­day said the "lock­down" would be in place for at least the next two weeks and would af­fect vis­its to prison by fam­i­ly mem­bers of pris­on­ers.

Con­tact­ed last night, Prison Of­fi­cers As­so­ci­a­tion pres­i­dent Ceron Richards said the height­ened se­cu­ri­ty mea­sures were long over­due.

He, how­ev­er, said his main con­cern was that the al­leged ac­com­plice or ac­com­plices to the prison break, re­fer­ring to his own col­leagues, are still on du­ty.

Say­ing he hoped the rel­e­vant au­thor­i­ties were close enough to mak­ing an ar­rest, Richards said: "This is a se­ri­ous cause for con­cern. We are call­ing for a thor­ough in­ves­ti­ga­tion be­cause if those in­mates had an ac­com­plice or ac­com­plices in uni­form, it is pos­si­ble that the of­fi­cer or of­fi­cers are still amongst us work­ing and this will fur­ther com­pro­mise the sys­tem," Richards said.

"All these things they im­ple­ment­ing now sup­posed to have been done long time ago, but we ex­pect noth­ing short of an ar­rest soon."

Richards said since the sit­u­a­tion on Fri­day he has heard noth­ing from the Com­mis­sion­er of Pris­ons Ster­ling Stew­art.

"His si­lence is deaf­en­ing. The coun­try needs to hear what they are do­ing about this sit­u­a­tion. Are they close to mak­ing an ar­rest?

"We need to hear from the Act­ing Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Stephen Williams as well. The coun­try can­not ac­cept any­thing less than the ar­rest of these of­fi­cers."

He added that he is afraid that if the al­leged of­fi­cers, who he de­scribed as mur­der­ers, are not ar­rest­ed, the as­so­ci­a­tion may be forced to take fur­ther and/or ap­pro­pri­ate ac­tion.

"Right now, some of the of­fi­cers are not com­fort­able work­ing be­cause this mur­der­er or these mur­der­ers (re­fer­ring to the al­leged prison of­fi­cers who helped the es­capees) are still work­ing like nor­mal and they must be held. Jus­tice must be brought swift­ly," Richards said.

"That per­son or peo­ple went in­to a con­tract to mur­der, to bring in guns and at the end of that some­one could lose their life be­cause guns in­volved, and in this case a life was lost. These ac­com­plices must be held be­cause the oth­er of­fi­cers are trau­ma­tised."

CCTV footage re­leased cap­tured mo­ments be­fore the prison break in­side the prison and showed Atwell, 41 and Sel­by, 30, run­ning to the main gate point­ing guns. One of them, keys in their hands un­locked the gate and the two ran out fol­lowed by Al­lan "Scan­ny" Mar­tin, 42. Mar­tin was cor­nered on the com­pound of the Port-of-Spain Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tal where he was killed. A hand­gun and cell­phone was re­cov­ered near his body.

CCTV footage cap­tured out­side the prison showed the es­capees shoot­ing at a marked po­lice ve­hi­cle out­side the prison. It was dur­ing that at­tack PC May­nard was killed.

Sel­by sur­ren­dered to of­fi­cers at the Barataria Po­lice Sta­tion on Sun­day. Ef­forts to reach Pris­ons Com­mis­sion­er Stew­art for com­ment yes­ter­day were un­suc­cess­ful, as calls to his cell­phone went unan­swered.

Unions set­tle

Side Bar

Rep­re­sent­ing unions for the T&T Fire Ser­vice, T&T Prison Ser­vice and T&T Po­lice Ser­vice last night signed off on set­tle­ments agree­ment agree­ing to 14 per cent in­creas­es.

The agree­ments were made with Chief Per­son­nel Of­fi­cer Stephanie Lewis in a sign­ing cer­e­mo­ny at Hilton Trinidad last night.

The break­down is: First Year, four per cent; Sec­ond Year, four per cent; Third Year, six per cent.

Richards last night said he be­lieved that all par­ties were hap­py and feel com­fort­able about the set­tle­ment.