Carisa Lee

Re­porter

carisa.lee@cnc3.co.tt

Po­lice are in­ves­ti­gat­ing a fra­cas at a school in Port-of-Spain that in­volved one of their own, as well as stu­dents and staff.

Guardian Me­dia un­der­stands that the in­ci­dent took place on Sep­tem­ber 25. Safe­ty of­fi­cer Sha­ka Wal­lace, who was in­jured dur­ing the al­ter­ca­tion, said the par­ent, iden­ti­fied as a po­lice of­fi­cer, had al­leged­ly sent a warn­ing to stu­dents and their par­ents in a class What­sApp group be­fore the in­ci­dent.

In the minute-and-a-half-long record­ing, a woman’s voice in a group ti­tled “So­cial SBA” is heard threat­en­ing the stu­dents for teas­ing her child about her hair.

“I want all yuh to play this for your par­ents and tell all yuh par­ents and let them come and meet me in that school in the morn­ing be­cause I will kill one of all yuh,” the voice said in part of the record­ing.

In an in­ter­view yes­ter­day, Wal­lace said the woman fol­lowed through on her promise and ap­peared at the school the next day, where she al­leged­ly ver­bal­ly abused stu­dents in the court­yard.

“So, af­ter they car­ried on with their in­sults and threats to mi­nors, be­cause she was mak­ing threats di­rect­ly to­wards hurt­ing chil­dren, when she got in­to the of­fice area, her be­hav­iour nev­er re­al­ly im­proved; it was just un­con­trol­lable,” he said.

CCTV footage from in­side the school’s of­fice shows the woman al­leged­ly at­tack­ing one of the stu­dents.

The close to four-minute-long video shows the woman grab­bing a stu­dent’s shirt as well as point­ing her fin­ger in the face of an­oth­er.

A phys­i­cal al­ter­ca­tion be­tween the woman and an­oth­er adult was al­so record­ed be­fore Wal­lace en­tered the space and im­me­di­ate­ly re­strained the woman.

“When I in­ter­vened, I could have felt the phys­i­cal strength of this la­dy, but she wasn’t able to over­pow­er me. But be­cause she wasn’t able to over­pow­er me, she bit me on my right fore­arm be­fore bit­ing me al­so in my face,” Wal­lace claimed.

The safe­ty of­fi­cer, who has five years of ex­pe­ri­ence, said he con­tin­ued to re­strain the woman, who then head­butted him and burst his lip.

“The blood was just stream­ing down from my face. I was just more like in shock,” he shared.

Wal­lace went for med­ical at­ten­tion and filed a re­port at the St James Po­lice Sta­tion.

He said he was dis­ap­point­ed by the of­fi­cer’s ac­tions and wants her to face the con­se­quences.

“Here, you have a po­lice of­fi­cer, al­though not in her of­fi­cial ca­pac­i­ty, per­pet­u­at­ing such acts. And I find it re­al­ly ap­palling. I re­al­ly want this mat­ter to be ad­dressed sig­nif­i­cant­ly... I don’t want this to be just an­oth­er one of those things. And this is the rea­son why I’m stand­ing firm and re­al­ly pur­su­ing this mat­ter, be­cause I was as­sault­ed,” he said.

At the start of the school term, po­lice of­fi­cers were de­ployed to 80 high-risk schools across the coun­try - 60 sec­ondary and 20 pri­ma­ry. How­ev­er, the school in ques­tion was not among them.

Act­ing Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Ju­nior Ben­jamin yes­ter­day con­firmed the woman is a T&T Po­lice Ser­vice mem­ber, adding they are gath­er­ing state­ments and ev­i­dence to en­sure a lev­el of trans­paren­cy and in­tegri­ty in deal­ing with this mat­ter.

“My un­der­stand­ing is that she is a po­lice of­fi­cer... And at the end, once we have enough to deal with this mat­ter in ac­cor­dance with the law, it will be dealt with the full brunt of the law,” he said.

Guardian Me­dia reached out to the Ed­u­ca­tion Min­is­ter Dr Michael Dowlath, who said he was look­ing in­to the mat­ter.