RHON­DOR DOWLAT

Se­nior Re­porter

rhon­dor.dowlat@guardian.co.tt

Act­ing Com­mis­sion­er of Pris­ons De­op­er­sad Ra­moutar has ex­pressed dis­ap­point­ment with the mem­bers of the un­der­world who were be­hind what he called an as­sas­si­na­tion at­tempt on two of his of­fi­cers, in­clud­ing Deputy Com­mis­sion­er of Pris­ons Sher­win Bruce.

His com­ment came af­ter prison of­fi­cer Steve Phipps, 49, was shot and wound­ed while pick­ing up Deputy Com­mis­sion­er of Pris­ons Sher­win Bruce in Barataria yes­ter­day.

Po­lice said Phipps ar­rived at Bruce’s Spar­row Av­enue, Barataria home to pick him up around 7.05 am in a white Toy­ota For­tuner. While wait­ing for Bruce to come out­side, how­ev­er, two ve­hi­cles, a white Toy­ota Axio with the plate num­ber PCU 2093 and a gold Nis­san Almera, bear­ing the plate PCH 4132, pulled up and three masked men got out and be­gan shoot­ing at the un­marked prison ve­hi­cle.

Phipps, who is Bruce’s body­guard, told po­lice that he bent down to avoid be­ing shot and al­so man­aged to re­turn fire at his at­tack­ers. He was, how­ev­er, shot in the up­per and low­er right arm.

A par­ty of po­lice of­fi­cers from the North East­ern Di­vi­sion Task Force re­spond­ed and took him to the Er­ic Williams Med­ical Sci­ences Com­plex, Mt Hope, for treat­ment, where he re­mains.

One of the sus­pects was lat­er dropped off at the Ari­ma Hos­pi­tal, where he sought treat­ment for a gun­shot wound. Po­lice on the site lat­er de­tained him.

Po­lice said Bruce was not harmed dur­ing the in­ci­dent.

When Guardian me­dia vis­it­ed the site, a res­i­dent thanked God for sav­ing his moth­er’s life, not­ing that a stray bul­let en­tered their house and struck a wood­en cab­i­net, shat­ter­ing the glass.

“I was sleep­ing and woke up to the sound of gun­shots. It jolt­ed me out of my sleep around 7 am. I no­tice a hole in the cab­i­net with the glass shat­tered,” the res­i­dent, who did not want to be iden­ti­fied, said.

“The stray bul­let would have en­tered from the front door, which was open. Usu­al­ly where my mum would be most of the time, it is a good thing she wasn’t there. I just heard shots fired on one end and shots be­ing fired on the next end. About 16 shots at least. Thank God for life.”

The res­i­dent said there was no con­cern over crime in the com­mu­ni­ty but said he ex­pect­ed res­i­dents will ex­er­cise more cau­tion and alert­ness in fu­ture.

“I went to bed at 3.30 am and be­fore I went to bed, I looked out­side and saw that there were no un­usu­al cars on the streets, noth­ing like that. It seemed per­fect­ly nor­mal but I was sur­prised to see all this,” the res­i­dent said.

“We tried to set up a watch group a cou­ple of years back but con­sid­er­ing this, I think it will be raised again and it will work out this time. It would be very help­ful, as al­ready there are po­lice pa­trols. I usu­al­ly would see them at nights, dur­ing the day.”

Speak­ing to Guardian Me­dia at the EWM­SC while vis­it­ing Phipps, Ra­moutar said the ser­vice will re­main strong. “This is not the first time this sort of at­tack on my of­fi­cers has tak­en place and def­i­nite­ly, we are not go­ing to be scared. We will con­tin­ue to per­form our du­ties.”

He not­ed that de­spite all spec­u­la­tion be­ing spread across so­cial me­dia plat­forms, in­clud­ing that the at­tack was due to the in­stal­la­tion of jam­mers at the prison, there was no ev­i­dence to sup­port the claims.

“They putting out there in­mates protest­ing against the jam­mers but it have no ev­i­dence as to what they are protest­ing and it mat­ters not to me. We will con­tin­ue do­ing our job.”

How­ev­er, he said it was dis­ap­point­ing that “they are bit­ing the hands that are feed­ing them”.

“For the last year and six months, I have man­aged to re­duce ten­sion be­tween the in­mates and of­fi­cers. We’re do­ing a fan­tas­tic job in re­ha­bil­i­ta­tion and ref­or­ma­tion but this is dis­ap­point­ing to me. Very dis­ap­point­ing,” Ra­moutar said.

“I want to say to the cit­i­zen­ry and those in the un­der­world who lis­ten to the news that you all have dis­ap­point­ed the pris­ons ser­vice. If you all can per­form a cit­i­zen’s ar­rest and bring those to us and place them be­fore Port-of-Spain gate, I will be hap­py that the law can take its ac­tion. We can­not keep a re­cur­ring dec­i­mal in at­tack­ing prison of­fi­cers, or should I say any law en­force­ment of­fi­cer, and af­ter a few days the nor­mal run of the mill oc­curs.”

He said he knows there are ex-in­mates and in­mates who do not sup­port harm­ing prison of­fi­cers.

“They do not and I am ask­ing you all to co­op­er­ate with the law en­force­ment, with the po­lice, give us in­for­ma­tion and stamp out these kind of crim­i­nal­i­ty,” he said.

“There are a lot of sug­ges­tions around and I don’t want to re­peat but sim­pli­fy­ing the mat­ter, the an­swer is in re­ha­bil­i­ta­tion, get­ting in­to the minds and hearts of those in­mates and wrong­do­ers to get them to re­alise and change their wicked ways. That’s my ap­peal, is for those in the un­der­world to show that you are not sup­port­ing this type of crim­i­nal­i­ty. Draw a line. Help us ar­rest those per­sons ... hand them over to the law en­force­ment of­fi­cers so that jus­tice can take its course.”

Asked how Phipps and Bruce were fol­low­ing the in­ci­dent, Ra­moutar said Phipps was in a lot of pain but in a sta­ble con­di­tion while Bruce was shak­en up.

He ad­mit­ted there was anx­i­ety and con­cern among of­fi­cers but not­ed, “We are a trained pro­fes­sion­al bunch , ... so we are go­ing to con­tin­ue to do what we have to do.”

Ra­moutar not­ed, how­ev­er, that they had stepped up se­cu­ri­ty around prison of­fi­cers and ac­tiv­i­ties they con­duct.

“The po­lice are as­sist­ing sig­nif­i­cant­ly and oth­er state agen­cies are on the ground try­ing to get in­for­ma­tion so that we can ap­pre­hend those crim­i­nals.”

In an im­me­di­ate re­sponse on its Face­book page yes­ter­day, the Prison Of­fi­cers’ As­so­ci­a­tion wrote: “Any at­tack on any agent of the state or its ma­chin­ery is con­demned by the Prison Of­fi­cers’ As­so­ci­a­tion of T&T.”

In­mates made threats

Two days pri­or to yes­ter­day’s in­ci­dent, on Oc­to­ber 9, the POA had sent a let­ter to Min­is­ter of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Fitzger­ald Hinds in­form­ing him of death threats be­ing made against prison of­fi­cers due to the con­tin­ued ban on the use of phones for in­mates and the in­stal­la­tion of a jam­mer at the Max­i­mum Se­cu­ri­ty Prison in Arou­ca.

That let­ter was al­so copied to Pres­i­dent Chris­tine Kan­ga­loo, Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley, Per­ma­nent Sec­re­tary at the Min­istry of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Gary Joseph and Act­ing Com­mis­sion­er of Pris­ons De­op­er­sad Ra­moutar.

In a re­lease yes­ter­day, Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice Er­la Hare­wood-Christo­pher as­sured the pub­lic that the safe­ty and well-be­ing of law en­force­ment of­fi­cers and the com­mu­ni­ty re­mains the TTPS’ top pri­or­i­ty.

“We in­tend to use all the re­sources at our dis­pos­al to ap­pre­hend those re­spon­si­ble for this at­tack,” she said.

She added that the TTPS is work­ing along­side the Prison Ser­vice in the mat­ter.

Dur­ing the week­ly TTPS me­dia brief­ing yes­ter­day, Snr Supt Mervyn Ed­wards, of the North East­ern Di­vi­sion, said of­fi­cers be­lieve the mo­tive for the at­tack was re­venge but added that they were un­able to say who the in­tend­ed tar­get of the shoot­ing was.