Po­lice have been called in to in­ves­ti­gate the source of a pho­to of a gun which was al­leged­ly found in the Gold­en Grove Re­mand Prison re­cent­ly.

Prison of­fi­cials in­sist there was no gun but pris­ons of­fi­cers are telling a dif­fer­ent sto­ry, in­sist­ing the gun was found dur­ing a search of the Re­mand Prison by of­fi­cers of the Max­i­mum Se­cu­ri­ty Prison.

Pris­ons com­mis­sion­er Ce­cil Duke, through the com­mu­ni­ca­tions de­part­ment, is­sued a state­ment de­scrib­ing the re­port as "false, ir­re­spon­si­ble, mis­lead­ing, mis­chie­vous and un­sub­stan­ti­at­ed."

The state­ment said the re­port was "de­signed to cre­ate fear and in­sta­bil­i­ty among mem­bers of the pub­lic and un­der­mine the work that is be­ing done by pris­ons au­thor­i­ties to main­tain a high lev­el of safe­ty and se­cu­ri­ty at our na­tion's pe­nal in­sti­tu­tions."

But pris­ons of­fi­cers yes­ter­day main­tained the weapon was found dur­ing a search of the Re­mand Prison last Wednes­day. They say MSP of­fi­cers were asked to con­duct the search since the "au­thor­i­ties did not want the re­mand pris­ons of­fi­cers con­duct­ing the search."

The gun was found in cell ten in the north wing in the "deep." A cell­phone with the num­bers of se­nior pris­ons of­fi­cers in its log was al­so found. The of­fi­cer who found the gun "is now be­ing ac­cused of ly­ing and is now scared," prison guards said.

But As­sis­tant Com­mis­sion­er of Pris­ons in charge of op­er­a­tions, Den­nis Pul­chan, is in­sist­ing no gun was found. He told the T&T Guardian that "it is some un­scrupu­lous pris­ons of­fi­cer who is work­ing in sync with an in­mate who is do­ing this. Who­ev­er the of­fi­cer is cre­at­ing that mis­chief does not be­long in the sys­tem. The mat­ter is now be­ing in­ves­ti­gat­ed by the po­lice to iden­ti­fy the per­pe­tra­tor."

Pul­chan con­firmed there was a search of the prison last Wednes­day but he said: "I am the as­sis­tant com­mis­sion­er of Pris­ons re­spon­si­ble for op­er­a­tions, all such in­for­ma­tion will come to me. Noth­ing of the sort came to my desk so there is noth­ing to in­ves­ti­gate."

Asked why there was a search of the prison, Pul­chan in­sist­ed: "Such search­es are a reg­u­lar oc­cur­rence. They are done every week so it is ba­si­cal­ly rou­tine. Oth­er items were found, in­clud­ing cell­phones, weapons and cig­a­rettes, noth­ing that aren't nor­mal­ly found."

The very same prison sources who told the T&T Guardian about the gun al­so gave de­tails about two foot­balls which were thrown over the walls of the East­ern Cor­rec­tion­al and Re­ha­bil­i­ta­tion Cen­tre (ECRC) at San­ta Rosa and which con­tained a num­ber of con­tra­band items, in­clud­ing mar­i­jua­na.

The same re­lease from the Pris­ons Ser­vice which de­nied a gun was found, con­firmed that two foot­balls were thrown over the walls of the ECRC by "un­known per­sons" and that the "po­lice had been called in to in­ves­ti­gate the find."