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Sunday, May 18, 2025

Guns hang from tree as prisons boss limes on beach with group

by

Dareece Polo
712 days ago
20230605

Se­nior Re­porter

da­reece.po­lo@guardian.co.tt

Act­ing Pris­ons Com­mis­sion­er De­op­er­sad Ra­moutar has ac­cused in­di­vid­u­als of at­tempt­ing to ma­lign his char­ac­ter af­ter a video sur­faced on­line show­ing two state-is­sued as­sault ri­fles and bul­let-proof vests hang­ing from a tree at a beach gath­er­ing.

The al­most four-minute clip which showed the faces of many of the peo­ple present was record­ed at Cha­cachacare. The video was shot on May 6.

The video be­gan with the smil­ing faces of prison and po­lice of­fi­cers, some of whom were a part of Ra­moutar’s se­cu­ri­ty de­tail, hang­ing out near cool­ers of drinks and food. Ac­cord­ing to the act­ing com­mis­sion­er, one civil­ian was present. It is not clear whether there was al­co­hol present.

“There are very wicked peo­ple in our so­ci­ety and one or two of those wicked peo­ple would have want­ed to make an is­sue of the video. All those per­sons there, those were of­fi­cers, not civil­ians. It would have been one per­son who would have been a civil­ian who was the dri­ver of the boat,” Ra­moutar said.

Mean­while, Ra­moutar de­fend­ed the de­ci­sion to have two as­sault weapons hang­ing from a tree while do­ing leisure­ly ac­tiv­i­ties.

“I am the Com­mis­sion­er of Pris­ons. I have ac­cess to and ac­com­mo­da­tion of se­cu­ri­ty in and around me so I have full au­thor­i­ty to have se­cu­ri­ty de­tail, in­clud­ing of­fi­cers with firearms to see about my pro­tec­tion. So it’s on­ly wicked, un­scrupu­lous peo­ple want to make some­thing out of that. There is noth­ing un­to­ward or wrong that was done in that,” he quipped.

On May 22, two weeks af­ter the gath­er­ing at Cha­cachacare, one of the prison of­fi­cers who was with Ra­moutar had his ser­vice-is­sued firearm stolen at Swal­lows Beach in Crown Point, To­ba­go. An in­ter­nal in­ves­ti­ga­tion has been launched in­to that mat­ter.

For­mer pris­ons com­mis­sion­er Den­nis Pul­chan, who com­ment­ed on the video, ex­pressed con­cern over the footage which he said demon­strat­ed the im­prop­er han­dling of the ser­vice-is­sued weapons.

“As far as I re­call, when a prison of­fi­cer is is­sued a firearm for a spe­cif­ic du­ty, he is du­ty-bound to pro­tect this weapon. The du­ty in­volves the use of a firearm so he is re­quired to be on the alert and keep the weapon in his pos­ses­sion as far as prac­ti­cal be­cause the du­ty of pro­tect­ing a com­mis­sion­er is a se­ri­ous one be­cause of the de­ci­sions he makes. His life is some­times threat­ened so a weapon with a de­tail that is pro­tect­ing the of­fi­cer should al­ways be in the pos­ses­sion of the of­fi­cer so as­signed,” Pul­chan said.

Prison Of­fi­cers’ As­so­ci­a­tion pres­i­dent Ger­ard Gor­don, al­so com­ment­ing on the is­sue, said that there ought to be strict ad­her­ence to the safe­ty pro­to­cols sur­round­ing the pos­ses­sion and use of firearms.

“It is noth­ing to be treat­ed light­ly nor is it some­thing to be shirked at and they must at all times be very cog­nisant of the fall-out of any mis­use, abuse or even an ap­pear­ance of be­ing slack as it re­lates to firearm own­er­ship and use cer­tain­ly will have a re­sound­ing dele­te­ri­ous ef­fect for oth­ers who are seek­ing the same fa­cil­i­ty,” he said.

What the Firearms Act says

• Un­der sec­tion 40 (3) of the Firearms Act, a li­censed firearm hold­er is ex­pect­ed to stow the weapon in a safe place away from chil­dren. Sec­tion 40 (2) notes that the in­di­vid­ual is al­so ex­pect­ed to lodge their weapon at a po­lice sta­tion when leav­ing the coun­try.

• It should be not­ed that un­der the Firearms Act, it is a crime for a per­son to have a firearm with him while drunk or un­der the in­flu­ence of drugs. If found guilty, that in­di­vid­ual faces a $20,000 fine and im­pris­on­ment for two years.

TTPS: 21 firearms re­port­ed stolen so far for 2023

Ac­cord­ing to the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice (TTPS), so far this year 21 firearms have been re­port­ed stolen. Two be­longed to the Min­istry of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty (MNS) and were Firearms Users Li­cence (FUL) hold­ers, sev­en were Es­tate Po­lice Firearms Users Em­ploy­ee Cer­tifi­cate hold­ers, and nine were civil­ian FUL hold­ers who lost two shot­guns and one ri­fle.

Last year, 20 firearms were re­port­ed lost or stolen. One was un­der the MNS, three be­longed to Es­tate Po­lice Con­sta­bles, and 12 were owned by civil­ians.

The footage in­volv­ing the Pris­ons Com­mis­sion­er comes amid a lock­down of the Teteron Bar­racks in Ch­aguara­mas over a Galil ri­fle that went miss­ing on Sun­day. A $75,000 re­ward is be­ing of­fered by the Min­istry of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty for in­for­ma­tion lead­ing to the ar­rest of those re­spon­si­ble for the dis­ap­pear­ance of the weapon.

No re­sponse from Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter

Guardian Me­dia con­tact­ed Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Fitzger­ald Hinds for com­ment, how­ev­er, there was no re­sponse up to the time of pub­li­ca­tion.


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