Rhon­dor Dowlat

The new­ly formed spe­cial elite unit that was as­signed to the Max­i­mum Se­cu­ri­ty Prison (MSP) last Thurs­day is said to be caus­ing “much” dis­com­fort and an­noy­ance among pris­on­ers, prison of­fi­cers and al­so, po­lice of­fi­cers to an ex­tent.

Ac­cord­ing to sources, the unit con­sists of high­ly trained and spe­cialised po­lice of­fi­cers from two elite units with the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice (TTPS)–the Guard and Emer­gency Branch and the Mul­ti-Op­tion­al Po­lice Sec­tion (MOPS). How­ev­er, ques­tions are now be­ing raised about the in­clu­sion of mem­bers of the T&T De­fence Force, who were ap­point­ed as Spe­cial Re­served of­fi­cers (SRPs) just for this ini­tia­tive.

The Sun­day Guardian was al­so told that the weapons seen in of­fi­cial pho­tographs re­leased by the TTPS’ cor­po­rate com­mu­ni­ca­tions de­part­ment on Thurs­day were ac­tu­al­ly TTDF-is­sued weapons.

On Thurs­day Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice Gary Grif­fith was pic­tured along­side five masked, armed men in po­lice gear as they pre­pared for a walk-through at the Max­i­mum Se­cu­ri­ty Prison in Pi­ar­co.

In one of the pho­tographs, Grif­fith was hold­ing one of the high-pow­ered weapons.

The unit was as­signed with­in the prison walls as an added safe­ty and se­cu­ri­ty mea­sure in the af­ter­math of Tues­day’s mur­der of MSP’s Prison Su­per­in­ten­dent (Ag) Wayne Jack­son.

Jack­son was am­bushed by gun­men sec­onds af­ter he drove in­to the dri­ve­way of his home in Mal­abar, near the Lar­ry Gomes Sta­di­um.

"The as­sign­ment of this unit with­in prison walls has cer­tain­ly ruf­fled feath­ers,” a prison source told the Sun­day Guardian.

“Prison of­fi­cers and po­lice of­fi­cers have been in­volved in crim­i­nal ac­tiv­i­ties, in as­so­ci­a­tion with some of the sea­soned pris­on­ers in here (re­fer­ring to MSP) and as­sist­ing them in send­ing their mes­sages, get­ting their cell­phones and pro­vid­ing them with lux­u­ri­ous things, so, by this move, the sta­tus quo has been shak­en up.”

Grif­fith: At­tempts by some of­fi­cers to dis­cred­it me

How­ev­er, in an im­me­di­ate re­sponse, Grif­fith de­scribed the al­le­ga­tions as "quite laugh­able".

He con­firmed that the of­fi­cers in the spe­cial unit are po­lice of­fi­cers and proud­ly stat­ed that they can "match among the best in the world".

Grif­fith made it clear that the unit was formed and placed be­cause of a di­rect re­quest made by the act­ing Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice, Dane Clarke.

"The po­lice can­not just go in the pris­ons ser­vice un­less they were asked and we were asked. There was a joint agree­ment made but it on­ly start­ed with the pris­ons com­mis­sion­er mak­ing that re­quest," Grif­fith said.

The top cop al­so made it abun­dant­ly clear that those po­lice of­fi­cers in that unit will make sure that noth­ing il­le­gal takes place "and any­thing that they can pin­point, that can al­lude to or be recog­nised as aid­ing and abet­ting in any crim­i­nal ac­tiv­i­ty they will nip it at the bud im­me­di­ate­ly".

"My con­cept is…if we clean up what hap­pens in­side the prison it could as­sist in re­duc­ing crime out­side the prison. I know ex­act­ly what I am do­ing and those are po­lice of­fi­cers, some of the most high­ly trained of­fi­cers," Grif­fith added.

Grif­fith said he be­lieved that there are at­tempts by some po­lice of­fi­cers to dis­cred­it him.

"(There are) about 20 of them send­ing mes­sages say­ing that I'm de­stroy­ing the ser­vice by what I'm do­ing but they are cor­rupt. They have been work­ing with gangs and af­fil­i­at­ing with gang mem­bers. They have been tip­ping off gang mem­bers when we are mak­ing raids," he said.

Grif­fith al­so dis­closed that he has al­ready be­gun a "crack­down" of of­fi­cers, who are abus­ing over­time and sick leave. He said he al­so start­ed re­view­ing files of sus­pend­ed po­lice of­fi­cers.

"Some of them are on sick have not been work­ing in the po­lice ser­vice but else­where and get­ting full pay but work­ing in oth­er places. I do not want their sup­port, I want them out be­cause they should not be in the ser­vice. They have em­bar­rassed the ser­vice and op­er­ate as very un­de­sir­able el­e­ments," Grif­fith said.

"Those on sick leave for years, who are on sus­pen­sion and get­ting three-quar­ter pay and those mak­ing $50,000 a month in over­time...

"These few rogue el­e­ments from abuse of over­time, sick leave and sus­pen­sion have made it more dif­fi­cult for the 95 per cent hard-work­ing of­fi­cers, who have to work and cov­er for them."