JENSEN LA VENDE

Se­nior Re­porter

jensen.lavende@guardian.co.tt

Ed­u­ca­tion Min­is­ter Dr Michael Dowlath is as­sur­ing that the armed of­fi­cers who will be de­ployed in 50 high-risk sec­ondary schools from to­day will not be pa­trolling the com­pounds and will stay out of the way of staff and stu­dents un­less they are called to ac­tion.

Say­ing the of­fi­cers will be sta­tioned at strate­gic spots in the schools to re­spond to ex­ter­nal threats, he adds said the of­fi­cers will be a “last re­sort” for in­ter­nal school con­flicts.

“They (po­lice) will have par­tic­u­lar roles. There’s a role for the prin­ci­pal, for the school safe­ty of­fi­cer, and all the oth­er peo­ple, the deans and things like that. So, the po­lice of­fi­cers are ba­si­cal­ly the last re­sort when you have in­ci­dents, es­pe­cial­ly of vi­o­lence and things like that,” Dowlath told Guardian Me­dia yes­ter­day.

How­ev­er, the pres­ence of armed po­lice of­fi­cers in schools is still re­ceiv­ing mixed re­views, with stake­hold­ers say­ing the pro­gramme needs to be rolled out cau­tious­ly.

Clin­i­cal psy­chol­o­gist and pres­i­dent elect of the T&T As­so­ci­a­tion of Psy­chol­o­gists, Vic­to­ria Siew­nar­ine-Gee­lals­ingh, said for chil­dren liv­ing in com­mu­ni­ties with strained po­lice re­la­tions, a pos­i­tive in­ter­ac­tion with an of­fi­cer in the safe sys­tem of school can po­ten­tial­ly re­shape their en­tire view of au­thor­i­ty and safe­ty, cre­at­ing a more sup­port­ive mod­el for fu­ture de­vel­op­ment. She said if armed of­fi­cers are an ab­solute must, she would agree to on­ly non-lethal means of re­straint.

“The psy­cho­log­i­cal trau­ma of be­ing face to face with lethal weapons, and the sec­ondary trau­ma to over­look­ers is not worth the sub­se­quent chal­lenges in func­tion­ing it is sure to bring to those in­volved,” Siew­nar­ine-Gee­lals­ingh said.

She be­lieves well-trained, sup­port­ive of­fi­cers can act as a se­cure base for stu­dents, par­tic­u­lar­ly those lack­ing sta­ble adult fig­ures. She added that the of­fi­cers’ con­sis­tent avail­abil­i­ty, re­spon­sive­ness, and sup­port can pro­vide a sense of safe­ty that al­lows the child to ex­plore their en­vi­ron­ment and learn ef­fec­tive­ly.

Mar­riage and fam­i­ly ther­a­pist Apryl James, the founder of “The Mind Up Club,” a men­tal health pro­gramme tar­get­ing chil­dren and teens, said a key is­sue will be the rules of en­gage­ment for the of­fi­cers.

“If a fight breaks out, will they be able to, you know, take their firearms out? I feel like these are the ques­tions that we need an­swers to. What are the pa­ra­me­ters in which they would be per­form­ing their du­ties? Is that they are pro­tect­ing the school against gang vi­o­lence, ex­ter­nal threats? We re­al­ly haven’t had a lot of that, you know, like gun vi­o­lence com­pared to the US schools. So, what ex­act­ly are we try­ing to ac­com­plish here?”

James said a bet­ter ap­proach to ad­dress­ing school vi­o­lence is through ther­a­py.

“What we need to see hap­pen is psy­chol­o­gists, so­cial work­ers, not just as­signed to five schools. These are high-risk schools. Make sure that they have so­cial work­ers and psy­chol­o­gists there in the school so the kids can al­ways have ac­cess to them.”

While crim­i­nol­o­gist Dr Mal­isa Nep­tune-Fi­garo un­der­stands the role the po­lice will play in schools, she says them be­ing armed in the sight of chil­dren at al­ready stig­ma­tised schools, may have a neg­a­tive im­pact.

“Psy­cho­log­i­cal­ly, it’s not a good look for chil­dren, es­pe­cial­ly with what am­mu­ni­tion rep­re­sents. It gives a more abra­sive and vi­o­lent out­look of teach­ing and deal­ing with be­hav­iours. It may im­pede and have a neg­a­tive im­pact on learn­ing and not on­ly that, but the psy­che be­hind it,” she said.

“How­ev­er, the pur­pose of hav­ing the arms and am­mu­ni­tion is to pro­tect stu­dents. It should be cov­ered, as in it should not be seen or should not be in the pres­ence of stu­dents if it is a pro­tec­tive, just like you have un­der­cov­er agents, they (chil­dren) should not be seen and made to feel threat­ened.”

The School Ori­en­ta­tion Po­lice Unit was formed af­ter Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar, in Ju­ly, re­it­er­at­ed her cam­paign promise of plac­ing po­lice in schools to ad­dress school vi­o­lence. The unit con­sists of some 95 Spe­cial Re­serve Po­lice (SRP) trained in: Fun­da­men­tals of Child and Ado­les­cent De­vel­op­ment, Chil­dren Jus­tice Pro­ce­dures, Al­ter­na­tive Dis­pute Res­o­lu­tion, the Role and Func­tion of the Po­lice in a School En­vi­ron­ment and Com­mu­ni­ty Polic­ing with­in Schools.

The 95 spe­cial­ly trained SRP of­fi­cers will be strength­ened by 25 Com­mu­ni­ty Polic­ing Of­fi­cers trained as field train­ing of­fi­cers. The of­fi­cers are to be sta­tioned at 50 high-risk sec­ondary schools with two of­fi­cers, one armed, at the schools. They will al­so be pa­trolling ten pri­ma­ry and ten sec­ondary schools.

Dowlath says the pro­gramme will be re­viewed af­ter six months.

The Na­tion­al Coun­cil Par­ent Teach­ers As­so­ci­a­tion (NPTA) and the Trinidad and To­ba­go Uni­fied Teach­ers’ As­so­ci­a­tion (TTUTA) both have reser­va­tions about the move.

NPTA pres­i­dent Wal­ter Stew­art says there is an au­ra of un­cer­tain­ty around the pro­gramme, while TTUTA pres­i­dent Mar­tin Lum Kin said while the in­tent is un­der­stood, the op­er­a­tional­i­sa­tion of the ini­tia­tive is flawed.