‘To hell with the govt!’

“TO hell with the government!”

This was the statement made yesterday by a fiery Ceron Richards, head of the Prison Officers’ Association, in the wake of yet another murder of a prison officer, in Princes Town yesterday morning.

Fed up with being ignored time and again while prison officers are being killed en masse, Richards lambasted the government, saying it does not care about prison officers.

At a press conference at the prisons sports club off Golden Grove Road, Arouca, Richards said all 2,000 prison officers are now threatening to walk off the job – and the POA is giving them its fullest support.

“To hell with them!” Richards screamed, during the press conference yesterday.

“The State is totally numb toward the plight of prison officers. We asked for guns – they don’t care about that.

“We asked for housing – they don’t care about that. We asked for a law to protect prison officers. They have the law in the Cabinet for years!

“A cigarette truck was robbed in this country and within minutes the people responsible were brought to justice.

“Prison officers are being killed with impunity in this country and we still have to wait for laws to arm officers. We still have to wait for safety and security measures to be put in place, and prison officers cannot protect their lives. Robbing a cigarette truck in TT is carrying more blasted weight than killing of prison officers.”

Richards’ statements came hours after the death of an officer identified as 38-year-old Darren Francis, who was shot and killed in Hindustan, Princes Town.

Richards voiced the association’s support of any prison officer who wants to walk off the job. He said being a prison officer is no longer tenable for the lives of the officers and their families, and called on the government to man the prisons themselves.

“Dr Keith Rowley, we are ready to leave. Bring your Cabinet and come and man the prison. We have nothing more to say to the State.

“Officers who walk off the job, you have our fullest support. This job has become a question of who is next,” Richards said. “This has become a terrorist state. The State is being attacked and the State is not pushing back.”

Richards was not the only person at the press conference who spoke out. Other prison officers, fed up of what they saw as a lack of concern for their lives, shouted their grievances while Richards spoke.

“Prisoners have more rights than we!” one shouted,

“When they killed Mr Jackson (superintendent of the Maximum Security Prison), the Minister of National Security said, ‘If you touch one, you touch all.’ They touched another one. What are they going to do now?

“We have to push back for ourselves – they will say we are vigilantes now,” shouted another.

“They calling it Operation Push Back, but it is really Operation Sit Back!” another yelled.

The prison service has been peppered with a series of attacks, some of which have ended in death. Francis, who ran the prison radio station, was the fifth officer to be killed in a year, and the second in weeks. Jackson was shot dead outside his Malabar home on October 2. On October 4, Kyle Ferreira was shot at while driving along Foster Road in Sangre Grande and a day later, the home of Khalil Baksh suffered fire damage after unknown assailants firebombed it.

Over the past 28 years, a total of 23 prison officers have been murdered. Acting Prison Commissioner Dane Clark told Newsday measures would be put in place, in the event of rampant absenteeism in the wake of Francis’s murder.

“Operations of the prisons will have to continue,” Clarke said. “We have to find a way to keep officers on the job, and keep the country safe.”

Clarke said the prison service continues to work closely with other arms of the Ministry of National Security to treat with incidents of violence against prison officers, and the Prison Task Force, announced by Commissioner of Police Gary Griffith earlier this month, is part of the initiatives.

He called for the prison officers to unite. “At this time we should be looking at healing and pulling together as a unit, as opposed to trying to divide us, because that would only serve to weaken the service even further,” Clarke said.