JENSEN LA VENDE

Se­nior Re­porter

jensen.lavende@guardian.co.tt

A new unit of spe­cial re­serve po­lice of­fi­cers de­ployed to 50 high-risk sec­ondary schools next week will be armed.

Guardian Me­dia con­firmed this with high-rank­ing T&T Po­lice Ser­vice of­fi­cials yes­ter­day.

How­ev­er, af­ter Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Roger Alexan­der seemed to con­tra­dict this dur­ing yes­ter­day’s post-Cab­i­net me­dia brief­ing, Alexan­der, Ed­u­ca­tion Min­is­ter Dr Michael Dowlath and Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Al­lis­ter Gue­var­ro sub­se­quent­ly re­fused to di­rect­ly say whether the of­fi­cers will have guns or some oth­er type of de­vice while on du­ty.

At the post-Cab­i­net brief­ing at the Diplo­mat­ic Cen­tre, St Ann’s, Dowlath an­nounced that 50 high-risk sec­ondary schools will have po­lice of­fi­cers as­signed, while ten pri­ma­ry and ten sec­ondary schools are to have rou­tine pa­trols.

When Dowlath was asked if the of­fi­cers would be armed, how­ev­er, Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Alexan­der in­ter­ject­ed, say­ing, “What I can tell you is this for sure, that those of­fi­cers will be giv­en non-lethal equip­ment that they can re­spond with in an ef­fec­tive man­ner.”

Pressed on whether the of­fi­cers would be armed, he said, “Well again, non-lethal weapons that they can be able to car­ry out their du­ties ef­fec­tive­ly.”

In a fol­low-up tele­phone in­ter­view with Guardian Me­dia, Dowlath said while he could con­firm, he would not and ad­vised that Alexan­der be con­tact­ed for con­fir­ma­tion.

When con­tact­ed, Alexan­der said all po­lice of­fi­cers at schools will be armed with non-lethal weapons and would be able to “treat with” any armed in­trud­er to pro­tect lives and prop­er­ty.

Al­so con­tact­ed last evening, CoP Gue­var­ro said of­fi­cers post­ed at se­lect­ed high-risk schools will be “ap­pro­pri­ate­ly armed based on op­er­a­tional as­sess­ments.”

He gave no clear an­swer on whether “armed” meant with gun, say­ing, “While all of­fi­cers will be equipped for re­sponse, what they will be armed with will be de­ter­mined by spe­cif­ic en­vi­ron­men­tal and safe­ty con­sid­er­a­tions, tak­ing in­to con­sid­er­a­tion the of­fi­cer, staff, and even stu­dent se­cu­ri­ty. For rea­sons of in­sti­tu­tion­al dis­cre­tion and to avoid cast­ing un­due neg­a­tiv­i­ty on any par­tic­u­lar school, the de­tails of these as­sess­ments will not be dis­closed.”

He as­sured, how­ev­er, that the de­ploy­ments are “de­signed to en­sure a pro­tec­tive pres­ence that is both pro­por­tion­ate and tac­ti­cal­ly sound.”

But a se­nior po­lice of­fi­cer, who did not want to be iden­ti­fied, said of­fi­cers as­signed to the high-risk schools will be armed.

“Non-lethal weapons will be avail­able to all of­fi­cers in all schools. How­ev­er, there are par­tic­u­lar high-risk schools where, should the need for oth­er op­tions arise, the same will be avail­able.”

Hours be­fore the post-Cab­i­net brief­ing, Deputy Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice Ju­nior Ben­jamin, who is the po­lice lead in the dis­cus­sions be­tween po­lice and the Ed­u­ca­tion Min­istry, al­so said the of­fi­cers are go­ing to be armed.

Ben­jamin spoke with Guardian Me­dia af­ter a meet­ing with Na­tion­al Coun­cil of Par­ent Teacher As­so­ci­a­tion pres­i­dent Wal­ter Stew­art. Ben­jamin ex­plained the ra­tio­nale be­hind armed of­fi­cers, say­ing guns are tools of their trade and of­fi­cers be­ing armed was a nor­mal oc­cur­rence.

“We are say­ing that as a tool of trade, it is not some­thing that is out of the way. When­ev­er you see a po­lice of­fi­cer, he’s nor­mal­ly armed. So, there­fore, see­ing the of­fi­cer in the school with his nor­mal tool of trade is noth­ing sur­pris­ing to any­body. It is part and par­cel. They are go­ing to have both lethal and non-lethal things.”

He added that the guns are there as a safe­ty pre­cau­tion against at­tacks.

Asked about po­lice in­volve­ment with school chil­dren, giv­en that by law, chil­dren ought not to be hand­cuffed and placed in marked po­lice ve­hi­cles, Ben­jamin said that will be ad­dressed.

“The thing about it is that even in those sit­u­a­tions, we have to un­der­stand the sit­u­a­tion as it re­lates to a po­lice of­fi­cer that is do­ing his du­ty. If an of­fence takes place in his pres­ence, he has the pow­er of ar­rest. It doesn’t mat­ter what the sit­u­a­tion is.”

Stew­art, along with Trinidad and To­ba­go Uni­fied Teach­ers As­so­ci­a­tion pres­i­dent Mar­tin Lum Kin, ex­pressed con­cerns over armed of­fi­cers at schools.

Stew­art said the School-ori­ent­ed Po­lice Unit was wel­comed but hoped it is a tem­po­rary mea­sure. He said the NCP­TA en­dorsed the of­fi­cers in schools to send a mes­sage that “enough is enough” and that school in­dis­ci­pline would not be tol­er­at­ed.

“We are hop­ing that it will be a tem­po­rary mea­sure and not a per­ma­nent mea­sure, so that over time, based up­on the in­ter­ac­tion, in­ter­ven­tion, and the in­clu­sion of po­lice of­fi­cers in our schools, the chil­dren and the stu­dents would re­alise that they have to turn their ways around,” Stew­art said.

Lum Kin, too, had no is­sues with the po­lice pres­ence but drew the line at guns in schools.

“TTUTA has al­ways been hes­i­tant about hav­ing armed per­son­nel in school com­pounds. As you’re aware, at some schools, the provider is the Na­tion­al Main­te­nance Train­ing and Se­cu­ri­ty (MTS), and MTS can pro­vide ser­vices as well, but that has not been done to my knowl­edge in the past. And we won­der why there’s the need to have armed per­son­nel on the com­pound of a school.”

He added that some schools al­ready have the am­bi­ence of a prison, and with gun-tot­ing po­lice of­fi­cers pa­trolling, the feel­ing of be­ing im­pris­oned may be in­creased.

“We are al­ways go­ing to be con­scious of, yes, it will send a sig­nal to the crim­i­nal el­e­ments, but you’re al­so send­ing a sig­nal to the oc­cu­pants of the school as well. Are they re­al­ly go­ing to feel safe? And the ques­tion al­so has to be asked: If an as­sailant comes in­to the com­pound with a weapon, say a pis­tol or any oth­er gun, is there go­ing to be the pos­si­bil­i­ty of a shootout? A gun­fight on the com­pound where in­no­cent per­sons can be harmed? So, all of these ques­tions need to be ad­dressed.”

Ed­u­ca­tion Min­is­ter Dowlath said he will meet with the po­lice again to­day.