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Wednesday, July 16, 2025

Prison service boss says threat meant to intimidate senior officer

by

Otto Carrington
414 days ago
20240528
Acting Commissioner of Prisons Deopersad Ramoutar at his office at Kew Place, Phillip Street, Port-of-Spain.

Acting Commissioner of Prisons Deopersad Ramoutar at his office at Kew Place, Phillip Street, Port-of-Spain.

NICOLE DRAYTON

Se­nior Re­porter

ot­to.car­ring­ton@cnc3.co.tt

Act­ing Pris­ons Com­mis­sion­er De­op­er­sad Ra­moutar says threats against his deputy com­mis­sion­er could be an at­tempt to in­tim­i­date the se­nior of­fi­cer and the prison ser­vice.

Over the week­end, Guardian Me­dia ob­tained a video that sur­faced on so­cial me­dia fea­tur­ing Deputy Com­mis­sion­er Car­los Caraspe’s name on a sheet of pa­per, ac­com­pa­nied by a date and a threat­en­ing mes­sage say­ing “don’t play”.

The video in­clud­ed a mu­sic track be­lieved to be from the Port-of-Spain gang Sixx.

Speak­ing to Guardian Me­dia yes­ter­day, Ra­moutar, who is set to re­tire soon, said the po­lice, in col­lab­o­ra­tion with the prison ser­vice, are in­ves­ti­gat­ing the mat­ter.

How­ev­er, he said he is un­cer­tain about what mo­ti­vat­ed the threat against one of his se­nior of­fi­cers.

“We are search­ing with the po­lice...cy­ber po­lice re­al­ly, but we have no clues as yet. Noth­ing on where it came from, what’s the mo­tive. I can guess the mo­tive is to in­tim­i­date and put fear, I can on­ly guess that, but we have noth­ing at all,” Ra­moutar said.

He said the threat may al­so be an at­tempt to scare his suc­ces­sor.

“I could guess it is to try to put some fear in the per­son com­ing to take over,” Ra­moutar said.

Prison Of­fi­cers As­so­ci­a­tion (POA) pres­i­dent Ger­ard Gor­don said over the week­end that while the video high­light­ed the dan­gers prison of­fi­cers face, it was not par­tic­u­lar­ly sur­pris­ing.
Gor­don said de­spite the video sur­fac­ing and be­ing shared, prison of­fi­cers were un­fazed.

“We are not par­tic­u­lar­ly more con­cerned than we al­ready are as it re­lates to the safe­ty of our mem­bers and oth­er of­fi­cers,” Gor­don said.

“To be very hon­est, threats are ba­si­cal­ly al­most a dai­ly oc­cur­rence in the life of a prison of­fi­cer. It’s a con­stant con­cern that prison of­fi­cers have, but it’s al­so the con­stant en­vi­ron­ment we face,” he added.

Gor­don said he hoped those peo­ple who were threat­en­ing prison of­fi­cers would be found and brought to jus­tice.


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