Prison officer arrested after drugs found at MSP

A prison of-fi-cer is in cus-tody af-ter be-ing found with drugs and oth-er pro-hib-it-ed items dur-ing a joint search ex-er-cise at the Max-i-mum Se-cu-ri-ty Prison (MSP) in Arou-ca on Wednes-day morn-ing. Ac-cord-ing to the Trinidad and To-ba-go Po-lice Ser-vice, the co-or-di-nat-ed op-er-a-tion was car-ried out by the TTPS and the Trinidad and To-ba-go Prison Ser-vice to main-tain the in-tegri-ty and se-cu-ri-ty of the na-tion’s pris-ons. The ex-er-cise, which be-gan around 8 a.m., was su-per-vised by Com-mis-sion-er of Po-lice Al-lis-ter Gue-var-ro, Com-mis-sion-er of Pris-ons Hay-den Forde, and Deputy Com-mis-sion-er of Po-lice Suzette Mar-tin. It was ex-e-cut-ed by the Deputy Com-mis-sion-er of Po-lice (Op-er-a-tions) Team, led by ASP Stan-ley, along with Cor-po-rals Williams and Hyde. Dur-ing ran-dom search-es of of-fi-cers re-port-ing for du-ty, one prison of-fi-cer was found with two vac-u-um-sealed bags of mar-i-jua-na, one vac-u-um-sealed bag con-tain-ing 69 Broad-way cig-a-rettes strapped to his body, and fif-teen As-tra ra-zor blades con-cealed in his wal-let. A sub-se-quent search of his ve-hi-cle un-cov-ered a clear plas-tic bag con-tain-ing more mar-i-jua-na, two dig-i-tal scales, lighters, a pair of scis-sors, two mem-o-ry cards, a pack of wrap-ping pa-per, and two im-i-ta-tion firearms. Po-lice said the to-tal weight of the mar-i-jua-na seized was ap-prox-i-mate-ly 300 grams. In-ves-ti-ga-tions are on-go-ing.