Shane Su­perville

Se­nior Re­porter

shane.su­perville@guardian.co.tt

Since of­fi­cers of the School-Ori­ent­ed Polic­ing Unit were as­signed to schools across Trinidad and To­ba­go last Sep­tem­ber, 33 stu­dents have been ar­rest­ed for var­i­ous of­fences, po­lice re­port­ed yes­ter­day.

The da­ta was dis­closed by As­sis­tant Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice (ACP) Bri­an Sood­een, of the Spe­cialised Sup­port Unit, dur­ing a me­dia brief­ing on Sackville Street, Port -of-Spain. He said the ar­rests were for of­fences in­clud­ing pos­ses­sion of mar­i­jua­na, pos­ses­sion of a weapon, sex­u­al mis­con­duct, as­sault on a school prin­ci­pal and re­sist­ing ar­rest.

Ac­cord­ing to Sood­een, the da­ta cov­ers the pe­ri­od from Sep­tem­ber 2025 to Jan­u­ary 28, 2026.

He out­lined sev­er­al key ob­ser­va­tions aris­ing from the ar­rests.

“Va­p­ing is one of the most com­mon in­frac­tions across schools, in­di­cat­ing a grow­ing trend among stu­dents that re­quires health in­ter­ven­tion,” Sood­een said.

“Fights and dis­or­der­ly con­duct re­main preva­lent, show­ing the need for con­flict res­o­lu­tion work­shops and peer me­di­a­tion pro­grammes.

“Pos­ses­sion of weapons and nar­cotics—mar­i­jua­na be­ing the most preva­lent—while few­er than in the pre­vi­ous term, re­mains se­ri­ous and high­lights the im­por­tance of con­tin­ued po­lice pres­ence and ran­dom checks.

“Sex­u­al mis­con­duct cas­es, while lim­it­ed, de­mand im­me­di­ate re­fer­ral to spe­cialised units and coun­selling sup­port.”

Asked whether the num­ber of schools as­signed of­fi­cers should be in­creased, or whether ad­di­tion­al of­fi­cers should be de­ployed to spe­cif­ic schools, Sood­een said such de­ci­sions fall un­der the purview of the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion.

Dur­ing a Joint Se­lect Com­mit­tee hear­ing in March 2021, di­rec­tor of Eye on De­pen­den­cy Garth St Clair warned that chil­dren in both pri­ma­ry and sec­ondary schools were at risk of re­cruit­ment by crim­i­nals. He not­ed that stu­dents from sin­gle-par­ent house­holds were par­tic­u­lar­ly vul­ner­a­ble due to fi­nan­cial pres­sures at home.

How­ev­er, head of the Com­mu­ni­ty Ori­ent­ed Polic­ing Sec­tion (COPS), Su­per­in­ten­dent David Guel­mo, said there was no da­ta to sug­gest that gang re­cruit­ment is cur­rent­ly tak­ing place in schools.

Re­spond­ing to ques­tions on how sus­pend­ed stu­dents are kept away from neg­a­tive in­flu­ences while out of school, Deputy Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice (DCP) Ju­nior Ben­jamin said part­ner­ships through COPS and con­flict res­o­lu­tion cen­tres — al­so known as sus­pen­sion cen­tres — were used for that pur­pose.

Ben­jamin added that parental re­sponse to the ini­tia­tive had gen­er­al­ly been pos­i­tive, ref­er­enc­ing a re­cent school vis­it where par­ents sug­gest­ed that ad­di­tion­al po­lice of­fi­cers be as­signed to that in­sti­tu­tion.

Al­so at­tend­ing the me­dia brief­ing was the pres­i­dent of the Na­tion­al Par­ent-Teach­ers As­so­ci­a­tion (NPTA), Wal­ter Stew­art, who said that while in­ci­dents of school vi­o­lence ap­peared to be de­clin­ing, po­lice pres­ence should be in­creased out­side school com­pounds, par­tic­u­lar­ly af­ter school hours.

“We are ob­serv­ing that school in­dis­ci­pline in­ci­dents are mov­ing away from the school precincts and tak­ing place out­side,” he said.

“We are there­fore re­quest­ing the TTPS to have both sta­t­ic and mo­bile pa­trols in and around schools, es­pe­cial­ly in the af­ter­noons af­ter dis­missal, as we have had in­ci­dents up to this week oc­cur­ring out­side school build­ings.”