“There is no evidence to suggest the death of prison officer Kendell Smith was linked to the installation of jammers in the Maximum Security Prison”, This from Prisons Commissioner Deopersad Ramoutar. Ramoutar was responding to an Instagram video from general secretary of the Prisons Officers’ Association Lester Logie suggested prisoners’ inability to communicate with their families led to prison officer Kendell Smith’s death.
Smith, 36, was shot dead while at Samaroo Village, in Arima on January 11, around 6.20 pm.
Logie, in an Instagram video on Friday, said the state installed cellphone jammers at the Maximum Security Prison last year and since then prison officers’ lives have been under threat. Logie insisted because the phones in prison locations for the inmates to speak to their families are not working, this was leaving prisoners upset, resulting in threats to the lives of officers.
Logie said: “Prison officers should not be dying because the state implemented jammers in the prison.”
He added “That is a standard thing that has been implemented throughout the world, and we should not be dying for that,” he added.
He also claimed prison officers do not control the jammers and called on National Security Minister Fitzgerald Hinds to implement the monitored in housephone system for inmates to communicate with their families so that so that officers’ lives will not be under threat. He said the in house phones are always monitored at all the prison facilities.