The police unaware of drug smuggling into psychiatric hospital

The police said that up until this week, they had no knowledge that residents were sneaking illegal drugs in to patients at Clarevue Psychiatric Hospital. The minister of health, Molwyn Joseph, made the revelation about the smuggling at a press conference last week, but when OBSERVER media contacted the Deputy Commissioner of Police Everton Jeffers, to find out how this would be addressed, he said as far as he’s aware, no one ever reported it to the police.
Therefore, it was not something that they were investigating. Last week, during a press conference, the health minister said, “The perimeterfence of the Clarevue hospital is totally inadequate. It has been that way for many years. The fence is porous. People can exchange things through the chain link fence. We are going to have to build a fence that can create a barrier between the rest of the community and the patients at Clarevue because one of the issues frankly we face for people with psychiatric problems are people who are using drugs and what is happening on a regular basis is that people on the outside, traffic drugs through these fences.”
Now that he has this information from the media, the seniorranking policeman said officers would now have to look into the matter and discuss how to address it since the institution is set up in a way that anyone can walk onto the compound, at any time, unchecked. Fixing the fence alone would not address the issue.
(More in today’s Daily Observer)