Shane Su­perville

Se­nior Re­porter

shane.su­perville@guardian.co.tt

T&T Uni­fied Teach­ers’ As­so­ci­a­tion (TTUTA) pres­i­dent Crys­tal Ashe says while he is not op­posed to se­cu­ri­ty ini­tia­tives aimed at en­hanc­ing pub­lic safe­ty, the au­thor­i­ties must com­mu­ni­cate bet­ter with teach­ing staff to pre­vent any un­nec­es­sary anx­i­ety and un­ease, es­pe­cial­ly dur­ing search­es at the check­points.

He made the call af­ter vis­it­ing the Mal­oney Gov­ern­ment Pri­ma­ry School and the Mal­oney Gov­ern­ment Ear­ly Child­hood Care and Ed­u­ca­tion Cen­tre yes­ter­day, where he said sev­er­al teach­ers were un­set­tled by the large-scale mo­bil­i­sa­tion of po­lice and sol­diers fol­low­ing the de­c­la­ra­tion of the com­mu­ni­ty as a closed area un­der the Spe­cial Op­er­a­tions Act.

He point­ed out that the po­lice were well with­in their right to take ac­tion to pre­vent an uptick in vi­o­lent crime in the com­mu­ni­ty, but felt the of­fi­cers should have di­rect­ly en­gaged with teach­ers, sug­gest­ing it would have been easy to do so, cit­ing the lo­ca­tion of the Mal­oney Po­lice Sta­tion across the street from both schools on Flamin­go Boule­vard.

“It would take a po­lice of­fi­cer lit­er­al­ly 30 sec­onds to walk and go in the school. So I am ask­ing how come... to­day be­ing the sec­ond day of this en­tire process... that a se­nior po­lice of­fi­cer has not come to do a lit­tle dam­age con­trol to com­mu­ni­cate with the prin­ci­pal, to al­lay their fears, to let them know, ‘Lis­ten, the po­lice are here to make sure you’re safe, we’re not here to cause you any prob­lems or make you un­com­fort­able’. I think that lev­el of com­mu­ni­ca­tion is miss­ing at this time,” he said.

“We’re not bouff­ing the po­lice, but TTUTA is ask­ing kind­ly that you com­mu­ni­cate with the schools that are close to the en­tire ex­er­cise.”

Ashe said at the Mal­oney Gov­ern­ment Pri­ma­ry, there were two teach­ers and a prin­ci­pal who lived with­in the com­mu­ni­ty and were im­pact­ed both as res­i­dents and teach­ers.

He main­tained that while class hours were not like­ly to di­rect­ly im­pact the move­ment of teach­ers who lived out­side the closed area, there were con­cerns from some staff, as they ar­rived to work just be­fore 6 am yes­ter­day and were ques­tioned by po­lice at check­points as they en­tered the neigh­bour­hood.

“These per­sons are not ac­cus­tomed to be­ing ques­tioned by the po­lice and if you are a law-abid­ing cit­i­zen, you re­al­ly feel un­com­fort­able when you’re asked cer­tain per­son­al ques­tions,” he said.

“We’re not say­ing you shouldn’t an­swer it, but some of them have said they are trem­bling be­cause they are un­easy and we are say­ing all of that can be fixed by sim­ple com­mu­ni­ca­tion with the school and you want to main­tain that com­mu­ni­ca­tion.”

Ashe there­fore urged the po­lice to al­low the teach­ers to do their job while be­ing as­sured that the height­ened ac­tiv­i­ties through­out the com­mu­ni­ty would not cause harm or ma­jor dis­rup­tion.