Come Jan­u­ary 2019, Min­is­ter of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Stu­art Young plans to take new leg­is­la­tion be­fore Par­lia­ment seek­ing an in­crease in the max­i­mum sen­tences, fines and penal­ties for com­mit­ting crim­i­nal acts against law en­force­ment of­fi­cers.

He made the an­nounce­ment dur­ing a joint me­dia con­fer­ence at the Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­istry in Port-of-Spain yes­ter­day.

Young called an emer­gency meet­ing with Chief of De­fence Staff Hay­den Pritchard, Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice Gary Grif­fith, act­ing Com­mis­sion­er of Pris­ons Dane Clarke and Pris­ons Of­fi­cers As­so­ci­a­tion pres­i­dent Ceron Richards fol­low­ing Tues­day night’s killing of act­ing Su­per­in­ten­dent of Pris­ons Wayne Jack­son.

Jack­son, who had over 30 years of ser­vice, was am­bushed by two gun­men short­ly af­ter pulling up in the dri­ve­way at his Mal­abar home, which is near the Lar­ry Gomes Sta­di­um at about 6.30 pm.

“We will in­crease the sever­i­ty of sen­tences for any crim­i­nal el­e­ment who de­cides to take on, to hurt, to in­jure and in a worst-case sce­nario, to kill any­one of our law en­force­ment of­fi­cers,” Young said.

Young al­so said they are go­ing to in­crease the penal­ties and sen­tences for any law en­force­ment of­fi­cer who is found to be or en­gages in the traf­fick­ing of any il­le­gal drugs, am­mu­ni­tion and oth­er crimes.

“In oth­er words, you can­not have it both ways,” Young said.

In ex­tend­ing con­do­lences to the T&T Prison Ser­vice, Jack­son’s fam­i­ly and friends, Young al­so took the op­por­tu­ni­ty to an­nounce his de­ci­sion to form a unit­ed In­ter-Agency Task Force made up of all law en­force­ment agen­cies to deal with the crim­i­nal el­e­ments.

“You touch one...you touch all of us and we are not go­ing to ac­cept crim­i­nal el­e­ments tar­get­ing any of our law en­force­ment of­fi­cers,” he said.

“We have re­newed, re­ju­ve­nat­ed and with more en­er­getic ef­forts and as one move­ment we have as­sured the Prison Ser­vice that all agen­cies are all go­ing to stand at each oth­er’s side and work along with the Prison Ser­vice.”

Young al­so said the na­tion’s CCTV cam­era ser­vices will soon be up­grad­ed and, not­ing the min­istry is al­ready in re­ceipt of bids and ten­ders which are now be­ing eval­u­at­ed. He said a sim­i­lar plan was pro­posed by the Prison Ser­vice for the pro­vi­sion of a cer­tain amount of in­di­vid­ual cov­er­age for prison of­fi­cers.

“When we are eval­u­at­ing the pack­ages we will look at a pos­si­ble in­te­gra­tion of that type of plan for the prison of­fi­cers. We in­tend to utilise as much tech­nol­o­gy as pos­si­ble be­cause it has evolved.”

In an im­me­di­ate re­sponse, Richards wel­comed the in­com­ing leg­is­la­tion and de­ci­sions so far but added that the as­so­ci­a­tion will be “cau­tious­ly op­ti­mistic.”

“This mur­der has rocked the ser­vice in many ways that are unimag­in­able. The mood in the pris­ons ser­vice is at the low­est thresh­old. It is very im­por­tant that prison of­fi­cers are in the type of frame of mind and have the con­fi­dence that the State is do­ing its best and ex­plor­ing all of its ef­forts to treat with their se­ri­ous is­sues and con­cerns,” Richards said.

“This Gov­ern­ment was the first to sit with the Pris­ons Of­fi­cers’ As­so­ci­a­tion to de­vel­op laws to be im­ple­ment­ed in the Par­lia­men­tary space. Last year the Min­istry of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty and the Of­fice of the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al formed a com­mit­tee to look at the ex­ist­ing laws and draft new laws and that was done...those are the two drafts that will go be­fore the Par­lia­ment.”

The ad­vance­ment of tech­nol­o­gy will al­so in­clude the up­grad­ing of the jam­mers and grab­bers equip­ment in the pris­ons, he said.

With re­spect to pris­ons of­fi­cers be­ing giv­en per­son­al firearms, Grif­fith as­sured it was be­ing ad­dressed on a risk as­sess­ment ba­sis.