Another prison raid unearths sim cards, cellphones, lighters, weapons

Prison officials carried out a raid at the Camp Street Prison in the morning hours of Wednesday, and a quantity of cannabis, three cell phones with SIM cards, four lighters, 20 improvised weapons and three razor blades were unearthed among the inmates.

This raid follows the transfer of high-profile criminals from that penal facility, after which multiple efforts were made to sanitise the facility.
Ever since the July 9 fire that effectively sacked the Camp Street Prison, several hundred prisoners have been relocated to penitentiaries across the country, but after a major incident wherein 13 inmates escaped from the Lusignan facility just 2 weeks after being rehoused there, authorities have opted to place those “real bad” prisoners at the Georgetown facility.
Minister of Public Security, Khemraj Ramjattan, has noted that before being placed at the new holding area, the prisoners were sanitised immediately prior to leaving the walled area of the Lusignan Prisons, where they were being held before their return to Camp Street.
“They don’t have cell phones. They don’t have a number of the things that they had. They were sanitised this morning before they went into the prison…so it is important that we understand that. They were sanitised at Lusignan, and then re-sanitised back at the prison [Camp Street]. So they are without all of the instruments and cell phones and other things that they had before,” the Minister had told media operatives on July 25.
Three major raids conducted respectively at Lusignan, Timehri and New Amsterdam prisons on August 4th — after it had been announced that the prisoners had been sanitized — had unearthed more than 40 improvised weapons, 20 cellphones, 3 tattoo machines, 28 packs of cigarettes, 33 lighters, and quantities of drugs.
Implicated
officer’s file with DPP
Following investigations by prison authorities at the Timehri facility, Director of Prisons, Gladwin Samuels, had reported that an officer was at the centre of the investigation. The officer was arrested after a prisoner claimed that he had paid “big money” to a staff to allow the items to pass through the security check point.
The prohibited items found at Timehri included eight lighters, seven smoking utensils, 16 improvised weapons, eight packs of cigarettes, two dining forks, two pairs of scissors, five cell phone chargers, one bottle pepper sauce, three cellular phones, one tattoo machine, a quantity of tobacco, and 305 grams of cannabis.
Sources within the prison system and the Police Force confirmed on Wednesday that the relevant file is with the Director of Public Prosecution (DPP), and they are awaiting advice. This comes nearly two weeks after the prison officer was first arrested.
During the August 4 major raid, three workers attached to a waste disposal service were arrested, and one, Akeem John, pleaded guilty and is now serving a three-year sentence for attempting to smuggle contraband inside the Lusignan Prison. A black bag with several packs of cigarettes and other prohibited items suspected to be marijuana — in black plastic bags and sealed with brown scotch tape – were found in their possession. The two other employees – a male and a female – have both pleaded not guilty to the offence.
After the July 9 fire and prison transfer, videos of prisoners using weapons to slaughter an animal and carve its meat on a pasture at the Lusignan facility had surfaced online. Moreover, prisoners were seen posting on social media, which caught the public’s attention. In 2016, Samuels, then Deputy Director of Prisons, had categorised contraband as a “multi-million-dollar business” from within the prison system.