Law en­force­ment agen­cies in T&T have been grap­pling with the ef­fects of the COVID-19 virus as they step out on the front­line to main­tain law and or­der and safe­ty.

Sev­er­al of­fi­cers un­der the Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­istry have been struck down–a few have died, hun­dreds have con­tract­ed the virus, and more than two thou­sand have been forced to quar­an­tine af­ter com­ing in­to con­tact with those who have been in­fect­ed dur­ing this pan­dem­ic.

The cries from work­ers are sim­i­lar across all agen­cies–they are clam­our­ing for more PPE (per­son­al pro­tec­tive equip­ment), san­i­tiz­ing agents, and pri­or­i­ty for the COVID-19 vac­cines.

Since the start of the pan­dem­ic last year, the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice has been hit hard by the Coro­n­avirus. More than 280 po­lice of­fi­cers have con­tract­ed COVID-19 and five of them have since died.

Ac­cord­ing to sta­tis­tics from the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice So­cial and Wel­fare As­so­ci­a­tion, up to 11.30 am on Thurs­day the num­ber of po­lice of­fi­cers/TTPS em­ploy­ees who test­ed pos­i­tive were 298, of which 286 are po­lice of­fi­cers. There were 1,108 po­lice of­fi­cers/TTPS em­ploy­ees on quar­an­tine. Of that fig­ure, 1,069 are po­lice of­fi­cers and 39 civil­ians. So far dur­ing the pan­dem­ic, the num­ber of po­lice of­fi­cers/TTPS em­ploy­ees that were in quar­an­tine and have since re­sumed du­ty is 2,902, of which 2,827 are po­lice of­fi­cers.

DCP Op­er­a­tions Er­la Christo­pher said that the TTPS con­tin­ued to be con­strained and its man­pow­er strength has been de­plet­ed as the num­ber of of­fi­cers test­ing pos­i­tive for COVID-19 is on the in­crease.

She, how­ev­er, not­ed that even though of­fi­cers are burnt out, the TTPS "still main­tain strate­gic road­blocks, checks and an­ti-crime op­er­a­tions and we con­tin­ue to po­lice our com­mu­ni­ties in ad­di­tion to our COVID-19 du­ties."

She said it was un­nerv­ing that af­ter all this time there were still peo­ple re­fus­ing to ad­here to reg­u­la­tions and re­stric­tions, "I want to ad­vise the ill-dis­ci­plined who are bent on breach­ing the reg­u­la­tions that the po­lice, al­though con­cerned for our health and the well-be­ing of our fam­i­lies and loved ones, will, with due care, car­ry out our func­tions. Do not be of the opin­ion that we are afraid of con­tract­ing the virus so we will not act.

"We will abide by the safe­ty stan­dards, wear­ing our PPE, and will ap­pre­hend vi­o­la­tors," she added.

Pres­i­dent of the Po­lice Ser­vice So­cial and Wel­fare As­so­ci­a­tion Gideon Dick­son em­pha­sised the need for "test­ing, vac­cines and PPE."

File picture: A prisons officer on duty at the Remand Yard, Golden Grove Prison, Arouca.

ROBERTO CODALLO

Prison Ser­vice ad­verse­ly af­fect­ed

The T&T Prison Ser­vice has al­so been ad­verse­ly af­fect­ed dur­ing the pan­dem­ic.

As of May 27, 299 pris­ons of­fi­cers test­ed pos­i­tive for COVID-19 while 1,260 of­fi­cers were placed un­der quar­an­tine through­out the pan­dem­ic. Of that num­ber, 202 are cur­rent­ly in quar­an­tine.

Pres­i­dent of the Pris­ons Of­fi­cers As­so­ci­a­tion Ceron Richards said a "con­sid­er­able amount of of­fi­cers have test­ed pos­i­tive and a con­sid­er­able amount is in quar­an­tine and that is ex­pect­ed be­cause there's a spike in the coun­try and of­fi­cers trav­el to and from their homes and work, but we are hop­ing that the COVID Com­mand Cen­tre do all that is nec­es­sary to en­sure that of­fi­cers get the pro­tec­tion, PPE and re­quired equip­ment to fight this."

Richards said they have re­ceived com­plaints that there are not enough PPE, "but the com­mis­sion­er has as­sured at a meet­ing that we have an ad­e­quate sup­ply so we will be do­ing our in­ves­ti­ga­tion to en­sure that is so."

Pris­ons of­fi­cers, a few weeks ago, called on the Min­istry of Health to put the prison sys­tem on its pri­or­i­ty list and have of­fi­cers and in­mates vac­ci­nat­ed. This call was re­newed af­ter a small dis­tur­bance broke out in the Women's Prison on May 30 fol­low­ing news that one of the pris­ons of­fi­cers test­ed pos­i­tive for COVID-19.

Sev­er­al calls have al­so been made by pris­on­ers at the Max­i­mum Se­cu­ri­ty Prison through of­fi­cers and their at­tor­neys to have them vac­ci­nat­ed.

De­fence at­tor­ney Fa­reed Ali said that the prison au­thor­i­ties need to ad­dress the threat to life at the pris­ons through­out T&T giv­en the cur­rent Coro­n­avirus pan­dem­ic.

Ali said the prison was a hotbed for mass in­fec­tions and a death trap for of­fi­cers and pris­on­ers.

"These in­di­vid­u­als can­not so­cial dis­tance in the prison whilst shar­ing a cell. Imag­ine nine men in a cell 9 by 6 feet in size speak­ing, sneez­ing, breath­ing the same air and in each oth­er's per­son­al space and face dai­ly. The is­sue re­mains that spe­cial mea­sures ought to be put in place to en­sure that men who share the same space in the pris­ons in T&T are suf­fi­cient­ly in­su­lat­ed from po­ten­tial in­fec­tions," he added.

A pris­ons of­fi­cer, who asked not to be named, said "Pris­ons of­fi­cers and ad­min­is­tra­tive staff have fam­i­lies to re­turn to. The risks to every­one giv­en that these peo­ple are part of a com­mu­ni­ty may cre­ate risks of spread be­yond the prison that may eas­i­ly in­volve the com­mu­ni­ty at large."

He said there has been no in­for­ma­tion on what has been done to en­sure that the pris­on­ers, the prison ad­min­is­tra­tors and staff are safe and se­cure.

"Ques­tions must be an­swered as to how many of the pris­on­ers have been vac­ci­nat­ed or still wait­ing to be vac­ci­nat­ed? Are the vac­cines al­lo­cat­ed and as­signed to all the pris­ons in T&T in the re­quired num­ber?" the of­fi­cer asked.

An­oth­er prison source said the East­ern Cor­rec­tion­al and Re­ha­bil­i­ta­tion Cen­tre in San­ta Rosa has been used as a fa­cil­i­ty where peo­ple who are ar­rest­ed, charged, tak­en to court and re­mand­ed in cus­tody are put there for 14 days. In that 14-day pe­ri­od you are in quar­an­tine and they test you to as­cer­tain that you are COVID free and then they re­lease you in­to the Max­i­mum Se­cu­ri­ty Prison where you will stay there un­til they send you to oth­er parts of the jail.

"There is a ten­den­cy to keep you now in MSP in cur­rent times and what is hap­pen­ing is that the test­ing they do in quar­an­tine is not PCR test­ing, it is tem­per­a­ture test­ing. They come and they use a tem­per­a­ture gauge and they mon­i­tor your tem­per­a­ture and if it's con­sis­tent over that 14 days and they know that you're COVID free then they re­lease you to the prison. The prison isn't en­gag­ing in PCR test­ing and nei­ther blood test­ing, it's tem­per­a­ture test­ing."

Act­ing Com­mis­sion­er of Pris­ons speaks

Act­ing Com­mis­sion­er of Pris­ons Shamshudeen Mo­hammed, how­ev­er, said that the Prison Ser­vice has de­vel­oped pro­to­cols that are con­sis­tent with oth­er cor­rec­tion­al ju­ris­dic­tions, "Our rigid in­take pro­to­col rit­u­als are guid­ed by in­ter­na­tion­al and lo­cal med­ical in­put. In­mates com­ing in­to the care of the in­sti­tu­tion are screened and mon­i­tored un­der the di­rec­tive of our med­ical ser­vices by tem­per­a­ture and SPO² mon­i­tor­ing for a pe­ri­od of 21 days.

"Af­ter clear­ance by the PMO they are then trans­ferred to var­i­ous sta­tions based on our cri­te­ria. Up­on ar­rival at the sta­tion they are again quar­an­tined for an­oth­er sev­en days and then placed in­to gen­er­al pop­u­la­tion af­ter be­ing seen by the PMO."

The ser­vice, he said, has di­vid­ed its sys­tem in­to the fol­low­ing COVID-19 clas­si­fi­ca­tions:

*Pri­ma­ry con­tacts

*Those show­ing symp­toms

*Await­ing swab­bing

*Swabbed and await­ing re­sults

*Pos­i­tive re­sults

Mo­hammed said these clas­si­fi­ca­tions are sep­a­rat­ed. "Our pro­to­cols can be con­sid­ered ef­fec­tive as a pop­u­la­tion of ap­prox­i­mate­ly 3,800 in­mates with­in the sys­tem at this mo­ment we have 11 in­mates treat­ed as pos­i­tive."

Ac­cord­ing to Mo­hammed, the pan­dem­ic has af­fect­ed them through "re­duced staffing which re­sult­ed in an in­creased work­load and ex­tend­ed hours" for the ad­e­quate main­te­nance of se­cu­ri­ty.

"Chal­lenge to main­tain a bal­ance of the health and well-be­ing of staff and charges, with pub­lic safe­ty and se­cu­ri­ty; in­abil­i­ty to ef­fec­tive­ly ob­serve so­cial dis­tanc­ing caused height­ened con­cern and anx­i­ety among both staff and charges; forced the ces­sa­tion or re­struc­tur­ing of day-to-day ac­tiv­i­ties; in­creased on­line pres­ence for con­stant pro­vi­sion of up­dates and in­for­ma­tion; al­lowed for the use of tech­no­log­i­cal ad­vance­ments such as vir­tu­al/on­line vis­its, on­line bank­ing sys­tem, vir­tu­al courts and al­lowed for in­creased com­mu­ni­ca­tion with the in­tro­duc­tion of mo­bile con­tacts for spe­cif­ic de­part­ments such as Com­mu­ni­ca­tions, Can­teen and Wel­fare," Mo­hammed said.

Some of the mea­sures put in place, ac­cord­ing to Mo­hammed:

* Es­tab­lish­ment and adop­tion of COVID-19 pol­i­cy guide­lines; es­tab­lished pro­to­cols for en­try in­to the pris­ons (tem­per­a­ture checks, the manda­to­ry wear­ing of a mask, san­i­tiz­ing);

* Re­in­forced hy­giene prac­tices; sen­si­ti­sa­tion ex­er­cis­es about COVID-19 in part­ner­ship with per­son­nel from the Min­istry of Health;

* Place­ment of COVID-19 sig­nage at strate­gic points with­in the pris­ons;

* Es­tab­lish­ment of a COVID Com­mand Cen­tre for re­port­ing, record­ing, mon­i­tor­ing and man­age­ment of COVID-19 amongst staff and charges;

* Im­ple­men­ta­tion of a COVID-19 hot­line, What­sApp fa­cil­i­ty and email for com­mu­ni­ca­tion;

* Pro­vi­sion of Per­son­al Pro­tec­tive Equip­ment and work­ing in con­junc­tion with TTDF to have mem­bers of staff vac­ci­nat­ed.

Mo­hammed dis­closed that spe­cial re­quests for of­fi­cers are "ad­di­tion­al PPE, san­i­tiz­ing agents and pri­or­i­ty vac­ci­na­tion."

He said, "The Trinidad and To­ba­go Prison Ser­vice re­mains com­mit­ted to the over­all safe­ty and se­cu­ri­ty of all mem­bers of staff and charges and will con­tin­ue to im­ple­ment and utilise fea­si­ble and prac­ti­cal mea­sures to en­sure same."

Fire officers at the scene of a fire at Mike’s Wreaking Service, Archer Street, Belmont, Port-of-Spain, in April.

ANISTO ALVES

72 fire of­fi­cers test pos­i­tive, in­creased in­ter­est in vac­cines

At the T&T Fire Ser­vice (TTFS), Act­ing Chief Fire Of­fi­cer Mar­lon Smith con­firmed that 72 fire Ser­vice per­son­nel have test­ed pos­i­tive to date and ap­prox­i­mate­ly 147 of­fi­cers in quar­an­tine as a re­sult of be­ing pos­i­tive or as a re­sult of be­ing un­well or be­ing in con­tact with an in­fect­ed per­son.

To have a fight­ing chance, the TTFS has adapt­ed a day-to-day op­er­a­tion to fall in line with the pub­lic health guide­lines by in­sti­tut­ing: pro­vi­sion of sani­ti­sa­tion points in all sta­tions; pro­vi­sion of dig­i­tal ther­mome­ters for the check­ing of tem­per­a­ture up­on en­try to the com­pounds, and ro­ta­tion of staff in ac­cor­dance to the Pub­lic Health Or­di­nance.

Smith dis­closed that sev­er­al mem­bers of the TTFS have been vac­ci­nat­ed, "It must be not­ed that per­son­nel were ini­tial­ly hes­i­tant to re­ceive these vac­cines, how­ev­er, this has since changed as in­creased in­ter­est has been shown in more re­cent times."