Shane Su­perville

Se­nior Re­porter

shane.su­perville@guardian.co.tt

With over 600 re­port­ed drone sight­ings near prison fa­cil­i­ties be­tween April and last month, Min­is­ter of Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty Roger Alexan­der says ef­forts are un­der­way to pro­cure an­ti-drone tech­nol­o­gy to quell the smug­gling and sur­veil­lance ac­tiv­i­ties by crim­i­nals.

On Fri­day, a joint ex­er­cise be­tween the prison ser­vice, T&T Po­lice Ser­vice and the De­fence Force led to the ar­rest of two peo­ple, among them a 13-year-old boy.

The duo, po­lice said, tried to fly a drone laden with mar­i­jua­na, cig­a­rettes, wrap­ping pa­per and cell­phones in­to the Arou­ca Max­i­mum Se­cu­ri­ty Prison. On Sep­tem­ber 28, three men were caught try­ing to fly sim­i­lar items in­to the same prison.

In the most re­cent in­ci­dent, po­lice said the 13-year-old boy was re­leased in­to the cus­tody of a guardian, while the sec­ond man re­mained in po­lice cus­tody but had not yet been charged as yes­ter­day.

Yes­ter­day, act­ing Pris­ons Com­mis­sion­er Hay­den Forde con­firmed that the num­ber of sight­ings of drones around pris­ons had be­come in­creas­ing­ly com­mon and was re­flec­tive of how de­ter­mined crim­i­nals were in by­pass­ing the prison se­cu­ri­ty.

“Since April, we have had close to 626 drone sight­ings over var­i­ous pris­ons, so it is show­ing that peo­ple are bent on try­ing to get con­tra­band in­to our sys­tem,” Forde said.

Mean­while, Prison Of­fi­cers As­so­ci­a­tion pres­i­dent Ger­ard Gor­don not­ed that drones have sight­ed re­peat­ed­ly near all prison fa­cil­i­ties, in­clud­ing the MSP, where as many as 50 sight­ings have oc­curred in one night.

“Some of­fi­cers have re­port­ed as much as 40 to 50 sight­ings per night at the Max­i­mum Se­cu­ri­ty Prison; then we had sight­ings at the Port-of-Spain prison, then we had in­ci­dents at the East­ern Cor­rec­tion­al and Re­ha­bil­i­ta­tion Cen­tre, so it has been a prob­lem for some time,” he said.

Yes­ter­day, Alexan­der con­firmed there were on­go­ing dis­cus­sions to tack­le the use of drones around prison fa­cil­i­ties, not­ing that such prac­tices were “long-stand­ing” is­sues to prison se­cu­ri­ty. He stressed that while he could not di­vulge the full de­tails of any planned se­cu­ri­ty arrange­ments, it would change se­cu­ri­ty in­fra­struc­ture at pris­ons in a “ma­jor way.”

“It (se­cu­ri­ty arrange­ments) is be­ing done as we speak. Even this week, some of­fi­cials are ex­pect­ed to vis­it and as­sist along those lines, be­cause this is some­thing that we have been com­plain­ing about for years. On an or­di­nary day, these things are done un­de­tect­ed, but the work of the Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice, Com­mis­sion­er of Pris­ons and oth­er agen­cies have been mon­i­tor­ing it more thor­ough­ly, it has be­come eas­i­er to de­tect now more than ever,” Alexan­der said.

“So, what we in­tend to bring will def­i­nite­ly change the land­scape of things in and around the prison.”

Alexan­der al­so said the tech­nol­o­gy would be the lat­est to en­sure the best pos­si­bil­i­ty of de­tect­ing and pre­vent­ing smug­gling op­er­a­tions.

He said any ad­di­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty mech­a­nisms would be arranged so that in­di­vid­ual prison of­fi­cers will not be able to dis­able it.

“We in­tend to get a lot of up­dat­ed equip­ment to treat with the drone prob­lem and not equip­ment that can be turned on and off by prison of­fi­cers.”

Al­so con­tact­ed yes­ter­day, act­ing Pris­ons Com­mis­sion­er Hay­den Forde con­firmed that talks were un­der­way with the Min­istry of Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty for an­ti-drone equip­ment.

Re­fer­ring to cas­es where an­ti-drone nets could be used to cap­ture drones, Forde said while these mea­sures would be use­ful, there were oth­er con­sid­er­a­tions be­ing en­ter­tained.

“What is re­al­ly need­ed are an­ti-drone de­vices that are in a fixed place, but can cov­er a cer­tain ra­dius and any drone which comes in­to that place, the de­vice can de­tect it, cap­ture it, defuse it; it can send it back to the op­er­a­tor where the po­lice can fol­low the drone and make an ar­rest if pos­si­ble,” he said.

“So, hav­ing the net is one thing, which is good, but it re­quires a cer­tain lev­el of dex­ter­i­ty from the pi­lot. But if you have some­thing fixed, that means you can deal with drones at any time of the day.”

Forde al­so ad­mit­ted he was par­tic­u­lar­ly con­cerned about the age of one of the sus­pects (13 years) in the most re­cent in­ci­dent last week­end, not­ing it was an ex­am­ple of crim­i­nals re­cruit­ing and in­clud­ing younger per­sons in their ac­tiv­i­ties.

“It seems as though they (crim­i­nals) are train­ing peo­ple to get in­volved in crim­i­nal ac­tiv­i­ties and con­tin­ue on that line,” he said.

“That is alarm­ing to us as a so­ci­ety be­cause ba­si­cal­ly, what they’re do­ing is suc­ces­sion plan­ning. So, it means that the crim­i­nal el­e­ments are en­sur­ing that crime is not abat­ed in this coun­try and young peo­ple, whose minds are bent eas­i­ly, they are us­ing these peo­ple and re­cruit­ing them to con­tin­ue their ne­far­i­ous ac­tiv­i­ties.”

Al­so con­tact­ed on the is­sue, Prison Of­fi­cers’ As­so­ci­a­tion Ger­ard Gor­don said he was not sur­prised by the fig­ures quot­ed by the Pris­ons Com­mis­sion­er, not­ing that drone sight­ings near pris­ons had grad­u­al­ly in­creased in fre­quen­cy in re­cent times.

He not­ed that the as­so­ci­a­tion has re­peat­ed­ly cit­ed con­cerns over the use of drones as part of crim­i­nal smug­gling op­er­a­tions, but felt they were of­ten dis­missed by the pub­lic.

“They thought we were blam­ing drones to de­flect away from rogue of­fi­cers when that is the fur­thest thing from the truth. ... So now that we have their at­ten­tion, we con­tin­ue to sup­port any at­tempt to im­ple­ment tech­ni­cal counter-mea­sures to ad­dress the is­sue.”

Drone sight­ings in re­cent week

Sept 28-29 2025: Max­i­mum Se­cu­ri­ty Prison, Arou­ca - Joint op­er­a­tion foiled drone drop; nar­cotics, cig­a­rettes, de­vices seized. Three held near prison wall.

Oct 3-4 2025: Max­i­mum Se­cu­ri­ty Prison, Arou­ca - DJI drone, 16 bat­ter­ies, cannabis and cig­a­rettes seized. Two held, one a 13-year-old.

May 2024: Max­i­mum Se­cu­ri­ty Prison, Arou­ca - Drone with 23 bat­ter­ies, mar­i­jua­na and cig­a­rettes found in car. Five ar­rest­ed.

Ju­ly 29 2025: Teteron Bar­racks, Ch­aguara­mas - Two drones in­ter­cept­ed over mil­i­tary base af­ter in­mate trans­fer. De­fence Force in­ter­vened.

Aug 21 2025: Staubles Bay, Ch­aguara­mas - Se­cu­ri­ty breach; con­tra­band found in­side base, UAV ac­tiv­i­ty re­port­ed near­by. In­mates moved back to Teteron

Ju­ly-Aug 2025: Be­tween Staubles Bay and Teteron - A few UAVs/drones de­tect­ed fly­ing over ar­eas. De­fence Force took ap­pro­pri­ate ac­tion.