An­na-Lisa Paul

Se­nior Re­porter

an­na-lisa.paul@guardian.co.tt

A Form One stu­dent of the Coryal Sec­ondary School in Cu­mu­to has be­come the first per­son to be de­tained by the new­ly formed School Ori­ent­ed Polic­ing Unit, af­ter he was found with a quan­ti­ty of mar­i­jua­na and wrap­ping pa­per at school yes­ter­day.

The 13-year-old, of East Trinidad, was in po­lice cus­tody up to last night as in­ves­ti­ga­tions con­tin­ued.

Re­ports in­di­cate that one of the po­lice of­fi­cers as­signed to the school re­ceived cer­tain in­for­ma­tion around 11.30 am, fol­low­ing which he ap­proached the stu­dent and or­dered him to emp­ty his pock­ets.

When the stu­dent com­plied, the of­fi­cer re­trieved the con­tents of his pock­ets, which in­clud­ed a pack­age con­tain­ing loose plant-like ma­te­r­i­al re­sem­bling mar­i­jua­na, and sev­er­al pieces of brown wrap­ping pa­per.

The stu­dent was told of the of­fence he was al­leged to have com­mit­ted and cau­tioned by the of­fi­cer, who went on to in­form the school prin­ci­pal.

Of­fi­cers from the unit, along with per­son­nel from the Cu­mu­to Po­lice Sta­tion and of­fi­cials from the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion vis­it­ed the school.

Se­nior of­fi­cials com­mend­ed the of­fi­cer for do­ing what he was trained to do and for his ded­i­ca­tion and com­mit­ment to du­ty.

Speak­ing on the in­ci­dent, Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Al­lis­ter Gue­var­ro said, “I con­tin­ue to stand firm­ly be­hind the School Ori­ent­ed Polic­ing ini­tia­tive, which has proven to be a vi­tal line of de­fence in safe­guard­ing our learn­ing en­vi­ron­ments.

“To­day’s in­ter­ven­tion un­der­scores the vig­i­lance and pro­fes­sion­al­ism of our of­fi­cers, whose pres­ence is not mere­ly sym­bol­ic but ac­tive­ly pre­ven­ta­tive.”

He urged par­ents and guardians, “to take a clos­er look at what their chil­dren are bring­ing in­to our na­tion’s schools.” “The last time I checked, plant-like ma­te­r­i­al was not on the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion’s ap­proved book list,” Gue­var­ro said.

Of­fi­cers from the unit were placed in some 60 high-risk schools at the start of the new school year last week. To­ba­go’s Sig­nal Hill Sec­ondary School and Ma­son Hall Sec­ondary School were added to that list­ing last week and of­fi­cers start­ed op­er­at­ing in those schools on Mon­day. The unit’s goal is to help school ad­min­is­tra­tions in­stil school dis­ci­pline.