Bavi­ta Gopaulchan

There is a le­gal hur­dle block­ing po­lice from clos­ing the in­ves­ti­ga­tions in­to the killings of prison of­fi­cers Trevor Ser­rette and Nigel Jones.

Act­ing Deputy Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er, Wen­dell Williams said this is why the Trinidad and To­ba­go Po­lice Ser­vice (TTPS) has not been able to pro­vide the pub­lic with con­clu­sive in­for­ma­tion on the in­ves­ti­ga­tion.

Prison of­fi­cers Jones and Ser­rette were gunned down in sep­a­rate in­ci­dents last No­vem­ber.

Jones was mur­dered while with his 4-year-old daugh­ter at Old Siparia Road Junc­tion while Ser­rette, 48, was killed at a fruit stall in San­gre Grande.

Nine peo­ple were de­tained in con­nec­tion with Ser­rette’s mur­der. How­ev­er, no one has been ar­rest­ed for Jones’ killing.

“We have in­ves­ti­ga­tions con­tin­u­ing in­to the killings of Mr. Ser­rette and Mr. Jones. There has been sig­nif­i­cant ma­te­r­i­al ob­tained in one of these in­ves­ti­ga­tions in par­tic­u­lar. We have a le­gal hur­dle to cross and that is part of the rea­son why we are not able to bring to you some con­clu­sive in­for­ma­tion on that par­tic­u­lar in­ves­ti­ga­tion,” Williams in­di­cat­ed.

“We have seen some ex­cel­lent work done and we in­tend to push to get what we need to solve and de­ter. So, we will con­tin­ue look­ing at the prison,” he added.

Last De­cem­ber, a hit list was dis­cov­ered at the Re­mand Yard, Gold­en Grove Prison, in Arou­ca. At the top of the list were prison of­fi­cers Ser­rette and Jones with the word, "dead" writ­ten next to their names.

“We’ve been aware for a while that cer­tain in­mates, some on re­mand in prison, have been com­plic­it ion com­mit­ting mur­ders while in prison so one of the ar­eas that I in­tend to con­tin­ue to give ef­fort in is treat­ing with that,” he af­firmed.

Williams as­sured that po­lice are work­ing on new ways to part­ner with the prison ser­vice to en­sure the safe­ty of its of­fi­cers. Ad­di­tion­al­ly, he said po­lice will con­tin­ue to crack down on er­rant prison of­fi­cers who have been fa­cil­i­tat­ing crim­i­nal ac­tiv­i­ties be­hind the prison walls.