Carisa Lee

Re­porter

carisa.lee@cnc3.co.tt

Po­lice are in­ves­ti­gat­ing an in­ci­dent in which two stu­dents were seen phys­i­cal­ly as­sault­ing an­oth­er stu­dent at Siparia East Sec­ondary School.

A 32-sec­ond video cir­cu­lat­ing on so­cial me­dia shows one stu­dent as­cend­ing a stair­case while two oth­ers re­peat­ed­ly strike her and at­tempt to pull her down.

South­west­ern Di­vi­sion head, Sr Supt Thomp­son, said the 14-year-old vic­tim was tak­en for med­ical treat­ment but did not sus­tain se­ri­ous in­juries.

He said the rel­e­vant charges against her at­tack­ers will be laid based on the ev­i­dence gath­ered.

The video was cir­cu­lat­ed just hours af­ter Deputy Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Ju­nior Ben­jamin re­port­ed a no­tice­able re­duc­tion in over­all of­fences across the na­tion’s schools due to the pres­ence of po­lice of­fi­cers in the in­sti­tu­tions.

How­ev­er, he ac­knowl­edged that some in­ci­dents are now spilling in­to the streets, prompt­ing fur­ther in­ves­ti­ga­tion.

“Some schools are still show­ing high lev­els of vi­o­lence,” he said, cit­ing feed­back from prin­ci­pals who not­ed im­prove­ments in some schools fol­low­ing the de­ploy­ment of of­fi­cers.

At the start of the new school year, Gov­ern­ment placed 95 trained Spe­cial Re­serve Po­lice (SRP) of­fi­cers in 10 pri­ma­ry and over 50 sec­ondary high-risk schools.

Siparia East Sec­ondary was one of the high-risk schools where of­fi­cers were as­signed.

In an in­ter­view, Ben­jamin said the pro­gramme has led to pos­i­tive be­hav­iour­al changes among stu­dents. Of­fi­cers con­tin­ue to build re­la­tion­ships with pupils, he said, help­ing them view the po­lice less as the “big bad wolf” and more as a “big broth­er.”

“These of­fi­cers add to the sup­port struc­ture with­in schools to en­sure dis­ci­pline, and we hope this will trans­form the lives of young per­sons by pro­vid­ing guid­ance and men­tor­ship,” he said.

Ben­jamin said there are cur­rent­ly no plans to ex­pand the pro­gramme, though it will re­main in place as long as the Gov­ern­ment deems it nec­es­sary.

“We will con­tin­ue li­ais­ing with the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion to analyse school needs, de­ter­mine if our pres­ence is still re­quired in cer­tain lo­ca­tions, and re­de­ploy re­sources to oth­er high-risk schools if nec­es­sary,” he ex­plained.
Asked for a com­ment on the suc­cess of the School-Ori­ent­ed Po­lice Unit, T&T Na­tion­al Coun­cil of Par­ent Teacher As­so­ci­a­tions (NPTA) pres­i­dent Wal­ter Stu­art said while it is still ear­ly days, there has been a no­tice­able de­cline in so­cial me­dia re­ports of school vi­o­lence over the past two weeks.
“The NPTA will con­tin­ue mon­i­tor­ing the sit­u­a­tion to as­sess the pro­gramme’s ef­fec­tive­ness and will work with stake­hold­ers to pro­mote pos­i­tive be­hav­iour among stu­dents,” he said.