An­na-Lisa Paul

Se­nior Re­porter

an­na-lisa.paul@guardian.co.tt

Po­lice yes­ter­day foiled a sec­ond drone drop at the Max­i­mum Se­cu­ri­ty Prison (MSP) in less than a week, ar­rest­ing two peo­ple, in­clud­ing a Pi­ar­co teenag­er.

The 13-year-old stu­dent of Orop­une Gar­dens, along with a 26-year-old man of Tu­na­puna, was ar­rest­ed fol­low­ing a chase in the Bon Air dis­trict.

The co­or­di­nat­ed in­tel­li­gence-led op­er­a­tion be­tween 6:30 pm on Fri­day and 5 am yes­ter­day in­volved mul­ti­ple arms of na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty.

It was spear­head­ed by Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Al­lis­ter Gue­var­ro; Deputy Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice, Op­er­a­tions, Suzette Mar­tin; and Se­nior Pris­ons Su­per­in­ten­dent, Lee Davis, who led the mul­ti-agency team in the sec­ond such ex­er­cise in as many days.

Act­ing on in­tel­li­gence that cer­tain in­di­vid­u­als were at­tempt­ing to smug­gle con­tra­band in­to the MSP in Arou­ca–us­ing a drone yet again–of­fi­cers went to Forde Street Ex­ten­sion at Bon Air and be­gan sur­veil­lance.

The team, which in­clud­ed per­son­nel from the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice (TTPS); the T&T De­fence Force (TTDF) Spe­cial­ist Units; the Port-of-Spain Task Force (POSTF); the Mul­ti Op­er­a­tional Po­lice Sec­tion (MOPS); the Crime Scene Unit (CSU); the T&T Prison Ser­vice (TTPrS); and the Spe­cial In­ves­ti­ga­tions Unit (SIU), searched a bushy area where they found the two sus­pects who at­tempt­ed to flee by run­ning through dense veg­e­ta­tion and leap­ing from a 25-foot em­bank­ment.

Of­fi­cers gave chase and were able to ap­pre­hend both men, fol­low­ing which a search com­menced along the riv­er.

Dur­ing the ex­ten­sive and de­tailed search, law­men re­cov­ered 1,050 grammes of cannabis, 256 packs of Lucky Strike cig­a­rettes, 15 Sam­sung cell phones, two LCD screens; one DJI drone and con­troller, and 16 drone bat­ter­ies among the items.

Mean­while, of­fi­cers al­so searched a house off Forde Lane, but no il­le­gal items were found at that lo­ca­tion.

While one of the sus­pects was be­ing treat­ed at the hos­pi­tal for a non-life-threat­en­ing in­jury sus­tained dur­ing the failed es­cape at­tempt, a si­mul­ta­ne­ous search of the MSP un­cov­ered and seized ad­di­tion­al con­tra­band.

This lat­est raid fol­lowed one be­tween Sep­tem­ber 28 and 29, which re­sult­ed in the ar­rest of three men and led to the re­cov­ery of a drone along with a quan­ti­ty of nar­cotics, com­mu­ni­ca­tion de­vices, and cig­a­rettes.

Those sus­pects, much like the two ar­rest­ed yes­ter­day, had been at­tempt­ing to smug­gle con­tra­band in­to the MSP us­ing a drone, just 50 me­tres out­side the prison walls, while a sim­i­lar raid at the MSP al­so net­ted a quan­ti­ty of il­lic­it items.

In a brief state­ment to the Sun­day Guardian re­gard­ing this lat­est ex­er­cise, Mar­tin said the au­thor­i­ties would be re­lent­less in their ef­forts to dis­rupt crim­i­nal ac­tiv­i­ties.

She said, “The TTPS con­tin­ues a ze­ro-tol­er­ance ap­proach to drone drops in our pris­ons. These il­le­gal ac­tiv­i­ties are be­ing dri­ven by or­gan­ised crim­i­nal net­works and pose a di­rect threat to na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty and pub­lic safe­ty. We are work­ing close­ly with the Pris­ons Ser­vice and oth­er na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty part­ners to dis­man­tle these op­er­a­tions and bring all of­fend­ers to jus­tice. Any­one in­volved—in­side or out­side the walls—will face the full weight of the law.”

The spe­cial op­er­a­tions and raids come even as the coun­try re­mains un­der a State of Emer­gency, which was rec­om­mend­ed based on in­for­ma­tion that in­car­cer­at­ed in­mates at the MSP had re­port­ed­ly formed them­selves in­to an amal­ga­mat­ed crime syn­di­cate and were or­gan­is­ing to car­ry out rob­beries, kid­nap­pings and as­sas­si­na­tions of high-pro­file state of­fi­cials and oth­ers in or­der to cre­ate chaos and dis­rupt the peace.

Items con­fis­cat­ed

1,050 grams of cannabis

256 packs of Lucky Strike cig­a­rettes

15 Sam­sung cell phones

2 LCD screens

1 DJI drone and con­troller

16 drone bat­ter­ies

7 rolls of thread

1 pow­er bank

12 charg­ing blocks

20 packs of Man­ga­lore hemp

12 lighters

50 packs of Bam­bu rolling pa­per

1 dig­i­tal scale

16 wired head­sets

1 wire­less head­set

15 USB ca­bles

4 nail clip­pers

1 flick knife

1 nail file