Jensen La Vende

Se­nior Re­porter

jensen.lavende@guardian.co.tt

Gen­er­al Sec­re­tary of the Prison Of­fi­cers As­so­ci­a­tion (POA), Lester Lo­gie, says the Prison Ser­vice must ac­cept some re­spon­si­bil­i­ty for the es­cape and sub­se­quent fa­tal shoot­ing of in­mate Abra­ham Brig­gs, who died yes­ter­day af­ter be­ing shot by po­lice dur­ing a con­fronta­tion in San­gre Grande.

Brig­gs, 28, of Brook­lyn Bridge Road, San­gre Grande, was serv­ing a six-year sen­tence for rob­bery with ag­gra­va­tion and was sched­uled to be re­leased in March 2029. He es­caped cus­tody around 5 pm on Tues­day while on labour du­ty at the Youth Train­ing and Re­ha­bil­i­ta­tion Cen­tre (YTRC).

He died at the San­gre Grande Hos­pi­tal af­ter be­ing shot dur­ing a man­hunt that end­ed along Guaico Tamana Road. Up to press time, de­tails sur­round­ing the po­lice con­fronta­tion re­mained un­clear.

Lo­gie said Brig­gs, who was clas­si­fied as a “star con­vict” (serv­ing his first sen­tence), should not have been on labour du­ty at all—es­pe­cial­ly so late in the day. Ac­cord­ing to prison reg­u­la­tions, the of­fi­cial “cease labour” time is 4 pm.

“Well, cease labour is usu­al­ly four o’clock, and we’re see­ing that cer­tain pro­grammes are push­ing be­yond that time. Of­fi­cers are con­cerned. Yes, those rules are old—it’s the 1943 prison rules—but they are still the law,” Lo­gie told Guardian Me­dia. “We just need to fol­low what’s there and main­tain se­cu­ri­ty.”

He fur­ther not­ed that while Brig­gs was a first-time of­fend­er, he was a “known pris­on­er” who had been in and out of the sys­tem, which may have caused of­fi­cers to let their guard down.

Prison of­fi­cials con­firmed that the pro­gramme Brig­gs par­tic­i­pat­ed in is in­tend­ed for con­vict­ed in­mates. How­ev­er, due to an im­bal­ance—where the num­ber of re­mand­ed in­mates out­weighs con­victs—some con­vict­ed pris­on­ers are al­lowed to join with­out un­der­go­ing prop­er vet­ting.

Lo­gie urged greater over­sight of prison op­er­a­tions, call­ing for ac­count­abil­i­ty among those charged with man­ag­ing the na­tion’s pe­nal sys­tem.

“It can­not be that some­one is in charge and there’s no ac­count­abil­i­ty for what’s tak­ing place. We have to shoul­der some blame for what’s be­ing said out there,” he ad­mit­ted. “We need­ed to take charge of our space, and we didn’t. It’s un­for­tu­nate that oth­er agen­cies are now do­ing that for us. We have to take some licks for what’s hap­pen­ing.”

He al­so called for height­ened se­cu­ri­ty with­in the prison sys­tem, es­pe­cial­ly un­der the on­go­ing State of Emer­gency (SoE).

Calls and mes­sages to act­ing Pris­ons Com­mis­sion­er Car­los Cor­rapse went unan­swered up to press time.

Last Fri­day, Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Al­lis­ter Gue­var­ro dis­closed that the SoE was prompt­ed by in­tel­li­gence sur­round­ing a crim­i­nal syn­di­cate tar­get­ing se­nior State of­fi­cials. In re­sponse, sev­er­al high-risk in­mates were trans­ferred from the Max­i­mum Se­cu­ri­ty Prison to mil­i­tary bases at Staubles Bay and Teteron Bar­racks.