Shane Su­perville

Se­nior Re­porter

shane.su­perville@guardian.co.tt

Class­es have re­sumed at San Juan North Sec­ondary School amid re­as­sur­ances from the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion and the po­lice that se­cu­ri­ty con­cerns at the school will be ad­dressed.

When Guardian Me­dia vis­it­ed the school yes­ter­day, class­es ap­peared to be in ses­sion, with stu­dents vis­i­ble from the out­side of the com­pound.

How­ev­er, res­i­dents in the sur­round­ing com­mu­ni­ty, in­clud­ing a rel­a­tive of one child at­tend­ing the school, said they are still con­cerned over the pos­si­bil­i­ty of crim­i­nals mak­ing their way on­to the com­pound.

The grand­moth­er of one boy at­tend­ing the school, who asked not to be named, said that while this was the first time she heard of a teacher be­ing robbed, she was con­cerned over the in­ci­dent be­ing re­peat­ed.

She said stu­dents were of­ten tar­get­ed by ban­dits on leav­ing the school.

The woman added that her grand­son al­so com­plained of in­ci­dents where chil­dren were robbed out­side of the school.

“I don’t like what hap­pened at all, be­cause they (crim­i­nals) may do some­thing worse.

“This is the first time I hear a teacher get­ting robbed, but it have lit­tle fel­las that does come and rob the school chil­dren of their lit­tle mon­ey and thing. They wait out­side the school and do that.”

The se­cu­ri­ty con­cerns fol­low the Sep­tem­ber 10 rob­bery of a teacher by a ban­dit who sneaked on­to the com­pound.

Po­lice said the teacher was in the cloth­ing lab of the school when she was con­front­ed by the ban­dit, who or­dered her to lie on the ground while ges­tur­ing with his right hand to his side bag, sug­gest­ing that he had a gun.

The ban­dit stole her hand­bag con­tain­ing her purse, per­son­al items, as well as $300 and US$1,900.

The sus­pect es­caped by run­ning through bush­es out­side the school.

The in­ci­dent trig­gered a mul­ti-stake­hold­er re­sponse, with of­fi­cials from the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion, the Trinidad and To­ba­go Po­lice Ser­vice (TTPS), the Trinidad and To­ba­go Uni­fied Teach­ers’ As­so­ci­a­tion (TTUTA) and the Na­tion­al Main­te­nance Train­ing and Se­cu­ri­ty (MTS) vis­it­ing the school and meet­ing with staff on sev­er­al dif­fer­ent days last week.

Sources at the school agreed that while this was the first time a teacher was robbed at the school, they have heard of in­stances where equip­ment—a weedwack­er and a leaf blow­er used by jan­i­to­r­i­al staff—was stolen, with the back fence at the south­ern edge of the com­pound be­lieved to be the point of en­try for the tres­pass­er, due to its con­di­tion.

Guardian Me­dia sought a com­ment from the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion, but was told by a spokesper­son yes­ter­day to re­fer to me­dia re­leas­es pub­lished last week, cov­er­ing the vis­it of Min­is­ter of Ed­u­ca­tion Dr Michael Dowlath and oth­er of­fi­cials to the school.

In one such re­lease, the min­istry said the MTS had be­gun works to clear veg­e­ta­tion on the south­ern side of the school.

The re­lease said the works would con­tin­ue on a “phased ba­sis”, in­clud­ing the in­stal­la­tion of so­lar-pow­ered lights and “oth­er se­cu­ri­ty mea­sures.”

Speak­ing with Guardian Me­dia yes­ter­day, one res­i­dent, Steve Fran­cis, said he was al­so con­cerned by the rob­bery, not­ing that while he nev­er heard of break-ins at the school be­fore, he was un­set­tled by the fact that a crim­i­nal gained en­try to the school un­de­tect­ed.

Fran­cis said he re­called see­ing a large con­tin­gent of po­lice of­fi­cers vis­it­ing the school last week, not­ing that while he was op­ti­mistic that se­cu­ri­ty would be tight­ened, he was not op­ti­mistic the ban­dit would be found, adding that crim­i­nals were be­com­ing more bold and des­per­ate in who they chose to at­tack.

“The se­cu­ri­ty and them can’t do any­thing. What they could do? They have to call the po­lice, the po­lice are the ones who can main­tain or­der.

“Whole week last week they were up and down in the school; some­times it was three (po­lice) jeeps go­ing in there.

“The place get hard now and peo­ple want to thief. You have to be care­ful when you with­draw­ing mon­ey.”

As of yes­ter­day af­ter­noon, po­lice could not con­firm if the sus­pect was ar­rest­ed as of­fi­cers of the San Juan CID were con­tin­u­ing en­quiries in­to the in­ci­dent.

Sources con­firmed that the San Juan North Sec­ondary School was as­signed of­fi­cers from the TTPS School-Ori­ent­ed Polic­ing Unit (SOPU).

Guardian Me­dia was told that of­fi­cers of the TTPS Vic­tim and Wit­ness Sup­port Unit vis­it­ed the school yes­ter­day to as­sist in fol­low-up in­ter­ven­tions with school staff and stu­dents.

Re­spond­ing to ques­tions via What­sApp, TTUTA pres­i­dent Crys­tal Ashe said the as­so­ci­a­tion’s in­dus­tri­al of­fi­cer was at the school yes­ter­day and promised to pro­vide a com­pre­hen­sive re­sponse once he re­ceived feed­back from the rep­re­sen­ta­tive.