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Friday, July 25, 2025

Association wary of results from meeting

by

20151104

In light of an ex­pect­ed meet­ing card­ed to­day with Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Ed­mund Dil­lon and the Pris­ons Ser­vice, mem­bers of the Pris­ons Of­fi­cers As­so­ci­a­tion are ap­pre­hen­sive whether any of the ini­tia­tives will in fact be im­ple­ment­ed as for sev­er­al years pleas for a safer and more con­ducive en­vi­ron­ment have gone un­heed­ed.

The as­so­ci­a­tion al­so warned that un­less im­me­di­ate mea­sures were im­ple­ment­ed more slay­ings like that of pris­ons su­per­in­ten­dent David Mil­lette would con­tin­ue.

Mil­lette, 50, was gunned down in the dri­ve­way of his home at Sec­ond Cale­do­nia, Mor­vant, at around 8.30 am on Mon­day.

A state­ment from the Po­lice Ser­vice yes­ter­day said Mil­lette was al­ready seat­ed in his car when he was ap­proached by four men, two of whom opened from ei­ther side, killing him in­stant­ly.

He suf­fered mul­ti­ple gun­shot wounds to the left side, up­per body and head, lead­ing in­ves­ti­ga­tors to de­scribe the mur­der as "vi­cious" and "cal­cu­lat­ed."

Speak­ing on CNC3's Morn­ing Brew yes­ter­day, the as­so­ci­a­tion's pres­i­dent, Ceron Richards, and gen­er­al sec­re­tary Ger­ard Gor­don warned that at­tacks, in­clud­ing that of planned "hits" from be­hind the pris­ons wall, would con­tin­ue un­less the au­thor­i­ties put con­cen­trat­ed ef­forts in place which of­fi­cers have been re­quest­ing for some time.

"The boil­ing point is all around be­cause when you look at the Ju­di­cia­ry and you look at the slow pace of jus­tice, pris­ons con­di­tions, safe­ty and se­cu­ri­ty... ini­tia­tives tak­en over the last decade it will give us a pic­ture of a boil­ing point sit­u­a­tion dai­ly," Richards said.

He added the re­al­i­ty was that pris­ons of­fi­cers were tar­gets sim­ply be­cause they were do­ing their jobs.

"We are at a point now where every of­fi­cer is un­der threat. The fact that Mr Mil­lette could have been on va­ca­tion and on va­ca­tion for a num­ber of months speaks vol­umes.

"What we have recog­nised is crimes of op­por­tu­ni­ty... Mr Mil­lette is not the first and based on what we have seen the politi­cians and ad­min­is­tra­tors of the day deal­ing with the is­sues he is not go­ing to be the last.

"And that is the gut-wrench­ing feel­ing be­cause you know that at some­time you are go­ing to get that call again," Gor­don said.

Don't jump to con­clu­sions

How­ev­er, pris­ons in­spec­tor Daniel Khan said con­clu­sions ought not to be drawn, es­pe­cial­ly in the light of in­suf­fi­cient ev­i­dence.

"At this stage we can­not say whether the mur­der of the pris­ons of­fi­cer is linked to his oc­cu­pa­tion.

"Cer­tain­ly the of­fi­cer had a dan­ger­ous job and one can draw the in­fer­ence that be­cause he works in an en­vi­ron­ment where there are crim­i­nals that it may be linked, but at this stage, I think that every­one should just hold their hand and wait for the re­port as ob­vi­ous­ly there will be some in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­to it," Khan added. The Ju­di­cia­ry, he added, had to be blamed as it had be­come a fail­ure.

"The Ju­di­cia­ry has and each crim­i­nal di­vi­sion has failed. It has not de­liv­ered jus­tice... be­cause of de­lays which for many rea­sons known.

"I think it is about time we re­think the en­tire sys­tem," Khan added.


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