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Saturday, July 26, 2025

Mixed reactions to Government’s decision to call SoE

by

Shane Superville
7 days ago
20250719

For­mer pris­ons com­mis­sion­er Ger­ard Wil­son says while there may be some mer­it for the Gov­ern­ment’s de­ci­sion to de­clare a State of Emer­gency (SoE) to com­bat pow­er­ful un­der­world fig­ures, it should main­tain con­sis­tent pres­sure on these crim­i­nals on a more con­sis­tent ba­sis.

Con­tact­ed for com­ment af­ter the lat­est SoE was de­clared yes­ter­day, Wil­son, who served as prison com­mis­sion­er from 2017-2020, said while he has no prob­lem with the steps be­ing tak­en to dis­rupt gang net­works in prison through the SoE, more ro­bust se­cu­ri­ty sys­tems must be rolled out more thor­ough­ly for the best re­sults.

He said such an ur­gent de­vel­op­ment war­rant­ed a se­ri­ous se­cu­ri­ty re­sponse.

He said is­sues re­lat­ing to the smug­gling of con­tra­band, in­clud­ing cell phones to in­mates, was a long­stand­ing chal­lenge which de­mand­ed con­tin­u­ous checks and bal­ances.

He said he felt the cur­rent se­cu­ri­ty re­sponse was ap­pro­pri­ate, but want­ed more con­tin­u­ous ef­forts to pre­vent a wide­spread pro­lif­er­a­tion of gang cul­ture be­hind bars.

He main­tained that the ba­sic in­fra­struc­ture of pris­ons made it dif­fi­cult to ef­fec­tive­ly fil­ter out con­tra­band, not­ing that dor­mi­to­ries for prison of­fi­cers be­ing lo­cat­ed on the prison com­pound it­self could pose a chal­lenge to se­cu­ri­ty ef­forts.

“How we deal with the is­sues in prison is eas­i­er said than done. I al­ways say the way the pris­ons are con­fig­ured... the dor­mi­to­ries for of­fi­cers should re­al­ly be on the out­side and not on the in­side and no one has ad­dressed that,” he said.

“So, iso­lat­ing the dor­mi­to­ries and hav­ing it on the out­side of the premis­es, so all the of­fi­cer is go­ing to his du­ty with is his reg­u­la­tion ac­cou­trements.

“You have to have a re­al­ly thor­ough se­cu­ri­ty ap­pa­ra­tus and we have tried this over and over, but it los­es mo­men­tum. It starts in a se­ri­ous way and it with­ers away and what my rec­om­men­da­tion is to keep it as rugged as pos­si­ble for as long as pos­si­ble.”

Wil­son al­so ad­mit­ted that the in­volve­ment of cor­rupt prison of­fi­cers could aid in the strength and in­flu­ence of these gangs and urged prison of­fi­cers to share in­for­ma­tion on any wrong­do­ing their col­leagues may be in­volved in.

“If you know there’s an­oth­er of­fi­cer traf­fick­ing then say some­thing. We have of­fi­cers who work hard and their lives are at risk if there are of­fi­cers bent on do­ing the wrong thing and I find with­in re­cent times, too many of­fi­cers have been held with con­tra­band com­ing in (to the prison).”

How­ev­er, crim­i­nol­o­gist Dr Randy Seep­er­sad con­tend­ed that the pur­port­ed threat against State of­fi­cials should have been dealt with by the prison ser­vice, as the con­spir­a­cy ap­peared to have orig­i­nat­ed be­hind prison walls.

He said in­stead of such a wide­spread se­cu­ri­ty re­sponse, the Gov­ern­ment, through the prison ser­vice, should have ad­dressed the mat­ter at the lev­el of the pris­ons.

Re­fer­ring to past con­cerns of in­mates get­ting ac­cess to cell­phones to or­der hits and con­tin­ue con­trol of their crim­i­nal em­pires even af­ter be­ing im­pris­oned, he sug­gest­ed the au­thor­i­ties cre­ate a more ro­bust sys­tem to quell such ac­tiv­i­ties be­fore al­low­ing it to es­ca­late to such a se­ri­ous lev­el.

“Try and con­trol the sit­u­a­tion in a set­ting which is al­ready much more cir­cum­sribed and con­trolled, which is the prison set­ting,” Seep­er­sad said.

“Tack­le the prob­lem with­in the prison and there may not be need for a State of Emer­gency which af­fects the na­tion as a whole.”

Seep­er­sad rec­om­mend­ed that pris­on­ers con­sid­ered gang lead­ers or mem­bers should be ro­tat­ed from prison to prison on a ran­dom ba­sis to pre­vent any or­gan­ised net­works from form­ing be­hind prison walls.

He al­so sug­gest­ed a more thor­ough roll-out of X-Ray scan­ners at all pris­ons and ques­tioned the ef­fec­tive­ness of cell­phone jam­mers at these fa­cil­i­ties.

“We know there are cell jam­mers with­in some of the pris­ons but they don’t al­ways work and the ques­tion is why? We need to make those things work with­in the prison ser­vice, and if you have the cell jam­mer net­works ap­pro­pri­ate­ly func­tion­ing, then even if pris­on­ers get their hands on a cell­phone, they won’t be able to make any calls at all.”

Seep­er­sad al­so urged cor­rupt prison of­fi­cers not to be swayed by the promise of mon­ey in ex­change for smug­gling cell­phones for pris­on­ers, as this could di­rect­ly lead to their own down­fall or those around them.

But for­mer po­lice com­mis­sion­er Gary Grif­fith isn’t con­vinced that an SoE was the best way to com­bat high-lev­el threats or achieve long-term re­sults.

Grif­fith was al­so crit­i­cal of the Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Al­lis­ter Gue­var­ro’s de­ci­sion to is­sue a me­dia re­lease re­port­ing that the TTPS would be rec­om­mend­ing an SoE be in­tro­duced. He said di­vulging such sen­si­tive in­for­ma­tion would give away the el­e­ment of sur­prise and com­pro­mise any crime-fight­ing op­er­a­tions.

“You let the pub­lic and the crim­i­nals be aware that we (the po­lice) don’t have the ca­pa­bil­i­ties to se­cure you, so we want the gov­ern­ment to help us by call­ing a State of Emer­gency,” Grif­fith said.

“What should have hap­pened is if the Gov­ern­ment them­selves say, ‘Lis­ten we want to call a State of Emer­gency ... enough is enough... com­mis­sion­er what do you think?’ And the com­mis­sion­er will send cor­re­spon­dence to agree.

“That will all be done to a de­gree of con­fi­den­tial­i­ty of doc­u­men­ta­tion un­til a de­ci­sion is made to call a State of Emer­gency or not!”

When asked if he agreed with Gue­var­ro’s de­ci­sion to rec­om­mend the in­tro­duc­tion of the SoE, Grif­fith said there were ad­e­quate mea­sures in place to com­bat crime with­out call­ing an SoE.

“A CoP beg­ging for an SoE to deal with an iso­lat­ed is­sue in a con­fined area shows in­abil­i­ty to be tac­ti­cal and strate­gic.”

De­spite this, TTPS So­cial Wel­fare As­so­ci­a­tion (TTPSS­WA) pres­i­dent, act­ing ASP Gideon Dick­son, main­tained the SoE as war­rant­ed giv­en the na­ture of the threat de­scribed.

When asked if there were any con­cerns over the work­load be­ing placed on of­fi­cers to do more dur­ing this pe­ri­od, Dick­son said he was con­fi­dent in the abil­i­ty of po­lice to main­tain their du­ties.

“The as­socuia­tion will al­ways be con­cerned about any added lay­ers of work that may cause our of­fi­cers to not have the best work-life bal­ance, but as pro­fes­sion­als, we jug­gle those sce­nar­ios with the fact that this is not an every­day oc­cur­rence,” Dick­son said.

“In this in­stance, we have not yet got­ten the time­line, that is some­thing we will en­gage the Com­mis­sion­er (of Po­lice) on, but we hope, trust and be­lieve that what­ev­er we do as a body it will be so sur­gi­cal, it will re­press and send a mes­sage to who­ev­er is bent on caus­ing may­hem to look and think twice.”


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