A prison of­fi­cer is in cus­tody af­ter be­ing found with drugs and oth­er pro­hib­it­ed items dur­ing a joint search ex­er­cise at the Max­i­mum Se­cu­ri­ty Prison (MSP) in Arou­ca on Wednes­day morn­ing.

Ac­cord­ing to the Trinidad and To­ba­go Po­lice Ser­vice, the co­or­di­nat­ed op­er­a­tion was car­ried out by the TTPS and the Trinidad and To­ba­go Prison Ser­vice to main­tain the in­tegri­ty and se­cu­ri­ty of the na­tion’s pris­ons.

The ex­er­cise, which be­gan around 8 a.m., was su­per­vised by Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice Al­lis­ter Gue­var­ro, Com­mis­sion­er of Pris­ons Hay­den Forde, and Deputy Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice Suzette Mar­tin. It was ex­e­cut­ed by the Deputy Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice (Op­er­a­tions) Team, led by ASP Stan­ley, along with Cor­po­rals Williams and Hyde.

Dur­ing ran­dom search­es of of­fi­cers re­port­ing for du­ty, one prison of­fi­cer was found with two vac­u­um-sealed bags of mar­i­jua­na, one vac­u­um-sealed bag con­tain­ing 69 Broad­way cig­a­rettes strapped to his body, and fif­teen As­tra ra­zor blades con­cealed in his wal­let.

A sub­se­quent search of his ve­hi­cle un­cov­ered a clear plas­tic bag con­tain­ing more mar­i­jua­na, two dig­i­tal scales, lighters, a pair of scis­sors, two mem­o­ry cards, a pack of wrap­ping pa­per, and two im­i­ta­tion firearms.

Po­lice said the to­tal weight of the mar­i­jua­na seized was ap­prox­i­mate­ly 300 grams.

In­ves­ti­ga­tions are on­go­ing.