KAY-MARIE FLETCH­ER

Se­nior Re­porter

kay-marie.fletch­er@guardian.co.tt

Port-of-Spain City Cor­po­ra­tion chair­man Al­der­man Wayne Grif­fith has for­giv­en the stu­dents that vi­o­lent­ly at­tacked him, but he still wants puni­tive ac­tion tak­en.

Speak­ing with Guardian Me­dia days af­ter he was as­sault­ed by stu­dents of the Tran­quil­li­ty Gov­ern­ment Sec­ondary School af­ter try­ing to quell a fight, Grif­fith said school vi­o­lence has turned in­to a form of gang vi­o­lence.

“From the depths of my heart, I do for­give them...But what I would say, it would be com­plic­it of me to just walk away and give them a slap on the wrist and a pat on the shoul­der. That is not where I’m go­ing with this. I think that some form of ac­tion should be tak­en. It’s much more than five of them. They swarmed me. It was a bar­rage of them, and it was re­al­ly a form of group and gang vi­o­lence… I think that there is a grow­ing amount of group and gang vi­o­lence with­in the school, and for most, the Gov­ern­ment has been talk­ing about de­ten­tion or­ders for gang lead­ers, etc, but the school is re­al­ly the new tree of where crim­i­nal ac­tiv­i­ty is born these days,” Grif­fith said.

Five stu­dents have been sus­pend­ed as a re­sult of the at­tack.

Still nurs­ing in­juries, Grif­fith said ac­tion must be tak­en, par­ents must be held ac­count­able, and the Gov­ern­ment needs to look at al­ter­na­tive forms of ed­u­ca­tion for delin­quent stu­dents.

He said he is hop­ing that these stu­dents and stu­dents in­volved in school vi­o­lence can be placed in­to youth pro­grammes.

“I think where puni­tive ac­tion should be tak­en, the greater con­sid­er­a­tion is how best we could guide these chil­dren through in­to pos­i­tive ac­tion and al­ter­na­tive forms of ed­u­ca­tion be­cause it would seem that the cur­rent state of af­fairs at that in­sti­tu­tion, Tran­quil­i­ty Gov­ern­ment Sec­ondary School, and not just that school, it’s a so­ci­etal prob­lem that the time has come for us to look in­to re­al­ly util­is­ing some of the al­ter­na­tive means. And there are al­ter­na­tive means. There is MY­PART. There is Mi­LAT. There is YTC. Al­so, there has been for years talk about com­pul­so­ry na­tion­al ser­vice, boot camps, etc. I think the time has come that Gov­ern­ment re­al­ly needs to look a lit­tle deep­er in­to re­al­ly struc­tur­ing some of these or­gan­i­sa­tions and mak­ing them tai­lor-fit to deal with some of these delin­quent youths  and to help save them and in­te­grate them, and bring them back in­to the wider so­ci­ety.”

Re­count­ing the as­sault, Grif­fith told Guardian Me­dia it all be­gan when he ob­served al­most one dozen stu­dents led by one fe­male stu­dent at­tack­ing one boy.

He said that as a fa­ther and the chair­man of the con­stituen­cy, he felt com­pelled to take ac­tion, but up­on do­ing so, the stu­dents turned and start­ed at­tack­ing him.

Grif­fith said one fe­male stu­dent cuffed him in his mouth, and the oth­ers fol­lowed by throw­ing him to the ground and beat­ing and rob­bing him. 

He said he was left with sev­er­al mi­nor in­juries. He added that the stu­dents al­so stole his cell­phone and watch.

Grif­fith said dur­ing the or­deal, he nev­er lost sight that they were chil­dren and as such he chose not to re­tal­i­ate.

How­ev­er, he did make an of­fi­cial po­lice re­port, and as in­ves­ti­ga­tions con­tin­ue, he wants all stu­dents in­volved to be dealt with now so they won’t turn in­to fu­ture crim­i­nals.

Alexan­der: Po­lice can’t be every­where; pro­tect your­selves

Al­so re­spond­ing to ques­tions on the at­tack in Par­lia­ment yes­ter­day, Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Roger Alexan­der said it was an iso­lat­ed is­sue, and as the in­ves­ti­ga­tion con­tin­ues, stu­dents could be charged.

At present, five stu­dents have been sus­pend­ed.

Alexan­der said, “This sit­u­a­tion was dealt with. It’s an iso­lat­ed in­ci­dent, and per­sons were al­ready sus­pend­ed with in­ves­ti­ga­tion if they would be fur­ther charged as it re­lates to this mat­ter.”

Alexan­der is al­so warn­ing cit­i­zens to pro­tect them­selves against crime as he says po­lice can­not be every­where at once. 

He added, “We have a care and con­cern for all cit­i­zens and all the right mea­sures will be put in place to pro­tect them but they too must un­der­stand that lis­ten, po­lice can­not be at every lo­ca­tion at every one time, so it is your re­spon­si­bil­i­ty some­times to fur­ther pro­tect your­self and not be a vic­tim of crime and not en­cour­age you to be a vic­tim of crime.”

Though po­lice of­fi­cers have been de­ployed to 60 sec­ondary schools across the coun­try since last year, and there’s an in­creas­ing call for more po­lice pres­ence at schools, ac­cord­ing to Alexan­der, the Min­is­ter could not con­firm if Tran­quil­li­ty Gov­ern­ment is one of the se­lect­ed schools with po­lice pres­ence.

How­ev­er, there’s been mul­ti­ple re­ports of school fights in­volv­ing Tran­quil­li­ty Gov­ern­ment Sec­ondary stu­dents in re­cent years.