RAD­HI­CA DE SIL­VA

Se­nior Mul­ti­me­dia Re­porter

rad­hi­ca.sookraj@guardian.co.tt

Par­ents of stu­dents at Rio Claro East Sec­ondary School staged a protest out­side the school on Thurs­day, vow­ing they will not rest un­til the per­son be­hind a se­ries of vi­o­lent on­line threats is ar­rest­ed.

The protest comes amid re­newed fear and frus­tra­tion fol­low­ing death threats post­ed on so­cial me­dia tar­get­ing the school, teach­ers, par­ents and stu­dents.

The threats have per­sist­ed since Oc­to­ber last year with­out an ar­rest.

Speak­ing to Guardian Me­dia, Ed­u­ca­tion Min­is­ter Dr Michael Dowlath an­nounced in­creased se­cu­ri­ty mea­sures at the school, in­clud­ing the as­sign­ment of ad­di­tion­al school-ori­ent­ed po­lice of­fi­cers, ex­tra safe­ty of­fi­cers and the con­tin­u­a­tion of on-site se­cu­ri­ty op­er­a­tions. He said all es­tab­lished en­try and ex­it pro­to­cols re­main in ef­fect.

How­ev­er, the pres­i­dent of the school’s Par­ent-Teacher As­so­ci­a­tion, Derek Coop­er, said par­ents are not sat­is­fied, in­sist­ing that what is be­ing promised on pa­per is not con­sis­tent­ly re­flect­ed on the ground.

“They’re just talk­ing to keep us at peace. When you ac­tu­al­ly go up there, the mea­sures are not im­ple­ment­ed,” Coop­er said. “They have the same two reg­u­lar po­lice of­fi­cers. This morn­ing, there was one chief and two po­lice—that was it. No ad­di­tion­al pres­ence.”

Coop­er warned that height­ened se­cu­ri­ty alone is not a long-term so­lu­tion, stress­ing that the key is­sue is the fail­ure to ap­pre­hend the in­di­vid­ual re­spon­si­ble for the threats.

“The is­sue is to ap­pre­hend this per­son. How long can you sus­tain a state of height­ened se­cu­ri­ty in a school com­pound?” he asked. “This per­son con­tin­ues to threat­en teach­ers, par­ents and stu­dents. We need re­sults.”

He al­so re­vealed that threats had been sent di­rect­ly to him ear­li­er this week, un­der­scor­ing par­ents’ fears that the sus­pect re­mains at large.

“Since Mon­day and Tues­day, threats have been sent to me. To­day is Thurs­day, and this per­son still isn’t held,” Coop­er said, adding that the sus­pect of­ten goes silent be­fore re­sum­ing the threats.

Par­ents have al­so raised con­cerns that the school’s rur­al lo­ca­tion may be con­tribut­ing to what they per­ceive as a slow­er re­sponse.

“If this were a pres­tige school or a Port-of-Spain school, we feel the re­sponse would be quick­er,” Coop­er said.

He al­so said that out of a pop­u­la­tion of 581, on­ly 87 stu­dents came to school on Thurs­day.

The protest fol­lows an es­ca­la­tion of on­line threats is­sued un­der the name Kevin Ran­di­al on Tik­Tok, in­clud­ing graph­ic mes­sages warn­ing of a “trag­ic event” at the school and de­clar­ing that “every­one will be dead soon.” Some posts al­so tar­get­ed spe­cif­ic in­di­vid­u­als and shared per­son­al de­tails, fur­ther height­en­ing fear with­in the com­mu­ni­ty.

While po­lice say in­ves­ti­ga­tions are on­go­ing, they have not con­firmed whether the per­son be­hind the ac­count has been iden­ti­fied or de­tained.

Par­ents say they plan to con­tin­ue protest­ing and are al­so or­gan­is­ing fur­ther ac­tion in­volv­ing Par­lia­ment and the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion un­til an ar­rest is made.

“We are not stop­ping,” Coop­er said. “Put the re­sources where they’re need­ed—cy­ber, ex­ter­nal sup­port—and ap­pre­hend this per­son so the school com­mu­ni­ty can move on.”