Camille Clarke

Act­ing Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er James Philbert says some pris­on­ers will be grant­ed ex­tra se­cu­ri­ty and will be giv­en bul­let­proof vests when at­tend­ing court.

Philbert was speak­ing with re­porters, dur­ing a brief in­ter­view af­ter the of­fi­cial open­ing of Bel­mont Po­lice Sta­tion yes­ter­day. This com­ment came in light of the killing of mur­der ac­cused Pe­ter Gar­cia, while be­ing es­cort­ed by po­lice of­fi­cers out­side the Rio Claro Mag­is­trates' Court on Oc­to­ber 18. "We will look at the in­di­vid­u­als at­tend­ing court and the of­fi­cers de­tailed to pro­tect them," Philbert said. He said it was "dan­ger­ous" for of­fi­cers to car­ry firearms when se­cur­ing pris­on­ers, be­cause in the past, pris­on­ers had strug­gled with the of­fi­cers and had tak­en their firearms. "To pro­vide that kind of se­cu­ri­ty, of­fi­cers can't go with firearms, but in­stead pris­on­ers will wear vests," he said. "We spoke with the ju­di­cia­ry and we will see how it goes."

Re­fer­ring to re­ports that a pris­on­er suf­fer­ing with the H1N1 virus at Port-of-Spain Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tal was un­der po­lice guard, Philbert said he hoped the pris­on­er would be giv­en bail. "We dis­cussed the mat­ter and hope­ful­ly, the pris­on­er will be at­tend­ed to, and be giv­en the treat­ment he de­served," he said. He said po­lice of­fi­cers ex­pressed con­cerns when they were deal­ing with the pris­on­er, and "we were ad­vised by the Min­istry of Health to sim­ply prac­tise per­son­al hy­giene." Mean­while, Philbert said, the Ch­agua­nas Po­lice Sta­tion was cleaned and "aired out," af­ter of­fi­cers re­port­ed­ly fell ill with the virus ear­li­er this year. "Jan­i­tors have to do more work clean­ing, sani­tis­ing and dis­in­fect­ing... They must al­so prac­tise the use of hand sani­tis­ers," he said. With re­gards to the wit­ness pro­tec­tion pro­gramme, Philbert said they were faced with lim­it­ed re­sources.

He said state wit­ness­es usu­al want­ed to live the same lifestyle at the safe house as they would out­side. "They are clas­si­fied, put in safe hous­es, mon­i­tored and they should co-op­er­ate with the au­thor­i­ties," he said. He said the wit­ness­es were asked to sign a con­tract and they must fol­low the rules. When asked about a state wit­ness who was cur­rent­ly ask­ing for as­sis­tance from the Wit­ness Pro­tec­tion Pro­gramme af­ter his safe house was com­pro­mised, the top cop quipped: "I don't know about that, but please let me know who he is." He said the open­ing of Bel­mont Po­lice Sta­tion was im­por­tant be­cause it mon­i­tored events such as Panora­ma and Car­ni­val. There are al­so sev­er­al ho­tels, schools, the Diplo­mat­ic Cen­tre, Queen's Hall, the Queen's Park Sa­van­nah and the Prime Min­is­ter's res­i­dence in the area.