POINTE BLANCHE--A total of 37 phones and a quantity of self-made weapons, drugs, pills, homemade alcohol and other items were found during a “clean” sweep of the Point Blanche prison that lasted several hours on Friday.
Prison Director Edward Rohan said the exercise had included a team of about 35 police, Customs, marine and Voluntary Corps VKS officers. The exercise began around 5:30am when officers gathered for a debriefing session. The actual search began shortly afterward and continued until around 2:00pm.
“We searched the entire prison. We cleaned it,” Rohan told The Daily Herald shortly after the exercise ended. “It’s nothing new, because we have been doing searches, but did not have the manpower to do it earlier.”
Rohan said the entire facility had been searched from cells to the prison workshop, sewing room, craft room, barber shop and library. At the end of the search officers had confiscated the large quantity of phones, self-made weapons, a large quantity of marijuana, medicine, pills and home-made alcohol.
Rohan said inmates were coming up with more creative ways of hiding contraband. He said one interesting case was a regular drawer made by an inmate to store things that had a space at the bottom just big enough to store phones. When the drawer was opened it seemed fine, but when it was checked underneath it was discovered that it was designed to store contraband.
Rohan said he had had discussions with the Justice Minister about a year ago and it had been decided that the searches would be conducted with members of the various disciplined services. Rohan said the search had been very successful and the parties who had participated were happy with the outcome.
