A prison of­fi­cer as­signed to the Port-of-Spain Prison has been placed un­der a Pre­ven­ta­tive De­ten­tion Or­der (PDO) af­ter he was ar­rest­ed on sus­pi­cion of fa­cil­i­tat­ing the in­tro­duc­tion of pro­hib­it­ed items in­to the prison sys­tem.

Ac­cord­ing to a me­dia re­lease from the TTPS, the of­fi­cer was ar­rest­ed on May 1 while on du­ty at the prison af­ter of­fi­cers con­duct­ed a search of his lock­er and dis­cov­ered sev­er­al pro­hib­it­ed ar­ti­cles.

Po­lice said the of­fi­cer had been un­der sur­veil­lance be­fore his ar­rest af­ter in­ves­ti­ga­tors re­ceived in­tel­li­gence al­leg­ing that he was in­volved in fa­cil­i­tat­ing the move­ment of pro­hib­it­ed items to in­mates with­in the prison.

Po­lice said in­mates were al­leged­ly co­or­di­nat­ing crim­i­nal ac­tiv­i­ties from in­side the cor­rec­tion­al fa­cil­i­ty through com­mu­ni­ca­tion with peo­ple out­side the prison sys­tem.

The re­lease stat­ed that the op­er­a­tion was co­or­di­nat­ed by Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice Al­lis­ter Gue­var­ro, Com­mis­sion­er of Pris­ons Car­los Cor­rapse and Deputy Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice Suzette Mar­tin.

The ar­rest comes a month af­ter prison of­fi­cer Keron Lewis was de­tained un­der a PDO.

Au­thor­i­ties had al­leged that Lewis act­ed as a fa­cil­i­ta­tor in co­or­di­nat­ing com­mu­ni­ca­tion and crim­i­nal ac­tiv­i­ties be­tween in­car­cer­at­ed in­di­vid­u­als and ex­ter­nal as­so­ciates.

A PDO al­lows the au­thor­i­ties to de­tain a per­son for in­ves­tiga­tive and se­cu­ri­ty pur­pos­es while in­quiries con­tin­ue.

The Port-of-Spain Prison has been the fo­cus of sev­er­al op­er­a­tions in re­cent years tar­get­ing con­tra­band and per­sons sus­pect­ed of in­volve­ment in il­le­gal ac­tiv­i­ties with­in the prison sys­tem.

Mean­while, sev­er­al peo­ple have been placed un­der PDOs by Min­is­ter of Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty Roger Alexan­der.

Those named in the no­tices in­clude Don­tae Stew­art, al­so known as “Dut­ty,” of Lance Noir Vil­lage, To­co; Is­rael Zion Bap­tiste, al­so known as “Hawkii” and “Hawk­eye,” of Sans Souci, To­co; Zion Ed­mund, al­so known as “Crabs,” of San Pablo, Va­len­cia; and Za­im Greenidge, al­so known as Ja­heim Greenidge, of Orop­une Gar­dens, Pi­ar­co.

Al­so named were Kevon Shaque­al Haz­are, al­so known as Kevonne Shaqeal Haz­are, of Orop­une Gar­dens, Pi­ar­co; Ke­shawn Matthews, al­so known as “Beans,” of Dun­can Street, Port-of-Spain and Orop­une Gar­dens; Jairus Brit­to of Orop­une Gar­dens; Ke­shawn Bas­t­ian, al­so known as “Ke­shawn Matthews Jr” of Orop­une Gar­dens; and Dalen Sandy, al­so known as Dale Sim­mons and “Matthew,” of Orop­une Gar­dens, Pi­ar­co.

Po­lice and prison of­fi­cials said in­ves­ti­ga­tions are con­tin­u­ing.