Wives beg prisons officers to quit the job

The family members of prisons officers have been urging them to quit their jobs for fear of their lives.

Commissioner of Prisons Gerard Wilson revealed this to Sunday Newsday yesterday at the North Central Regional Health Authority’s (NCRHA) launch of My Brother’s Keeper at the St Joseph Enhanced Health Facility, Mt Hope, yesterday.

My Brother’s Keeper initiative consists of executive medical screening directed towards active duty members of the protective services. In addition to blood testing, ECG tests, a chest X-ray, and a personal consultation with a medical doctor to review the findings, the project includes a Stress Test and later on, stress management training.

Wilson said he believed stress was a silent killer and his officers were under a lot of stress. He said in addition to continued death threats where officers never knew what would happen next, they also had to deal with the loss of their fellow officers, and family pressure.

“A lot of officers find it difficult to cope and then, too, their families put pressure on them in terms of the risk to them and their families. In fact, families are asking officers to leave the job because they are afraid for them. Some wives prefer to see about their husbands until better can be done than to stay on the job. That’s how frightening it is.”

He said a lot of officers were going through health issues at the moment and over the last two years the service lost several relatively young officers to lifestyle diseases. He added that they recently lost four officers – one died of cancer, one died in his sleep, officer Wilber Edwards died on Friday with lung problems, and then there was the murder of officer Davindra Boodooram at Frederick Street, Port of Spain, in January.

He said after Boodooram’s murder, a number of officers in PoS requested counselling so the intervention was timely and appreciated.

“It’s fantastic. It’s just short of a miracle. It is good to know somebody saw it fit to include the Prisons Service. A lot of times officers feel neglected, we are not supported enough, we are criticised and sometimes ostracised. So to have the NCRHA see us as a beneficiary to this process is something that we really appreciate.”

My Brother’s Keeper is an extension of the NCRHA’s Ready for the Road initiative which provided free executive medical screening for over 200 leading entertainers, bandleaders, pan players, and media personalities last month leading up to Carnival.

It started yesterday with 60 prisons officers and is expected to continue every other Saturday for the rest of the year for the benefit of the nation’s 3,000 prison officers.

Prison Officers Association president Ceron Richards yesterday said for years the wives, children and other family members of prison officers had been asking them to leave the service.

He said over the years a number of young officers who were new to the job left because of that family pressure, and recently several others approached the association, as well as the prisons administration, about leaving the job.

He said association members were able to mitigate the issue and get the officers to continue working but he did not know how much more pressure officers could take.

He said being a prisons officer was the second most stressful job in the world so heart problems, and heart failure were frequent ailments in the service.

Richards said in addition to the murders of officers, family concerns were also why the association sought laws for their protection. “This will go a long way in calming the nerves of the officers and easing their anxiety and that of their family.”

He said the Office of the Attorney General formed a committee to draft some of the laws dealing with the safety of officers, including the main law they want to see put in place, the Law Enforcement Officers Safety Act. He said the committee should be ready with a draft by March 1.

“We want to thank the Attorney General for establishing the committee to work on the law but the Government has to do more. They have to tell us how they intend to fit this into the parliamentary agenda and in what time frame, given the fact that these circumstances are real and officers are being affected by it.”