A co­or­di­nat­ed joint op­er­a­tion by of­fi­cers of the Prison Emer­gency Re­sponse Unit and the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice re­sult­ed in the seizure of a quan­ti­ty of con­tra­band items at the Ex­ter­nal Re­mand Fa­cil­i­ty and the Re­fur­bished Gold­en Grove Prison, Arou­ca. The ex­er­cise took place be­tween 10:00 p.m. on Tues­day 2:30 a.m. on Wednes­day.

The op­er­a­tion was co­or­di­nat­ed by Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice Al­lis­ter Gue­var­ro, Act­ing Com­mis­sion­er of Pris­ons Hay­den Forde, and Deputy Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice Suzette Mar­tin, and was su­per­vised by Se­nior Su­per­in­ten­dent Lee Davis. Par­tic­i­pat­ing of­fi­cers in­clud­ed ASP Stan­ley, Act­ing Cor­po­ral Williams, Act­ing Cor­po­ral Hyde, WPC Joseph, PC Fab­res, PC Gib­son, and PC Par­sons.

Dur­ing the op­er­a­tion, of­fi­cers dis­cov­ered and seized 14 cell phones, 12 SIM cards, 10 USB cords, 15 cell phone charg­ers, five head­sets, a quan­ti­ty of mar­i­jua­na, a quan­ti­ty of loose cig­a­rettes, sev­er­al packs of wrap­ping pa­per, one litre Cole Cold bot­tle with a false bot­tom, three im­pro­vised weapons, one flick knife, and one sil­ver spoon.

A to­tal of eight in­mates are ex­pect­ed to be for­mal­ly charged in the com­ing weeks in re­la­tion to of­fences con­nect­ed to the seized items.

The Trinidad and To­ba­go Po­lice Ser­vice and the Pris­ons Au­thor­i­ty stat­ed that they re­main com­mit­ted to main­tain­ing safe­ty and se­cu­ri­ty with­in cor­rec­tion­al fa­cil­i­ties and will con­tin­ue to con­duct joint op­er­a­tions in­tend­ed to re­move con­tra­band and lim­it unau­tho­rized items with­in the prison sys­tem.