KEVON FELMINE

kevon.felmine@guardian.co.tt

Po­lice are like­ly to lay charges against a fa­ther cap­tured in video footage beat­ing a male stu­dent at the Mor­vant Laven­tille Sec­ondary School.

Speak­ing on CNC3's The Morn­ing Brew yes­ter­day, act­ing ASP Ashraf Ali con­firmed that the po­lice deemed the in­ci­dent an as­sault.

The video showed the fa­ther drag­ging the school­boy from a car, hold­ing the child by his school bag and punch­ing him in his head.

Ali said the boy’s par­ents re­port­ed the in­ci­dent to the po­lice, and there is an on­go­ing in­ves­ti­ga­tion. When the in­ves­ti­ga­tors sub­mit their find­ings, the TTPS will de­ter­mine what charges to lay against the fa­ther.

Ali said it would be a de­ter­rent against oth­er par­ents re­spond­ing vi­o­lent­ly to is­sues re­lat­ing to their chil­dren.

“There are oth­er means that you can use. You need to re­port it to the po­lice. Yes, you might feel that the po­lice might be mov­ing a lit­tle slow­er than you an­tic­i­pate, but at the end of the day, those are chil­dren mak­ing al­le­ga­tions against each oth­er. We can­not just jump on the band­wag­on and say that when an al­le­ga­tion is made, we find the per­son guilty im­me­di­ate­ly.

An in­ves­ti­ga­tion has to be ini­ti­at­ed, and both sides have to have a hear­ing,” Ali said.

The boy's moth­er, Rox­anne Phillip, said the school sus­pend­ed her son and an­oth­er boy for a week for chok­ing and in­ap­pro­pri­ate­ly touch­ing a girl on the com­pound. When he re­turned, he did not speak to the girl. How­ev­er, Phillip said when he walked to get a car to re­turn home, the girl's fa­ther was dri­ving around, look­ing for her son. She said the al­le­ga­tions were out of char­ac­ter for her son and peo­ple told her they were un­true.

Ali said the Po­lice Ser­vice (TTPS) does not want par­ents to take it up­on them­selves to re­spond to school vi­o­lence sim­i­lar­ly. The TTPS is hope­ful the sit­u­a­tion does not evolve in­to some­thing more se­ri­ous.

He said these sit­u­a­tions could cre­ate a cy­cle of par­ents at­tack­ing stu­dents be­cause of in­ci­dents in the school. Ali wants par­ents to trust in the law and be­lieve the ap­pro­pri­ate ac­tion will fol­low.

“The vi­o­lent cy­cle has to stop. We need to be more re­spon­si­ble in our ac­tions. Yes, I can un­der­stand the cir­cum­stance in how the par­ent may have felt. As a par­ent, I un­der­stand. I em­pathize with par­ents, but at the end of the day, we can­not take the law in­to our hands. There is a le­gal sys­tem. There is the Po­lice Ser­vice.”

The Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion and school prin­ci­pals have pro­ce­dures to deal with er­rant be­hav­iours in school, and Ali said a sus­pen­sion is one method. How­ev­er, he said it is not an in­di­ca­tion of guilt in the eyes of the law and the TTPS. If the po­lice have to charge the boy for al­leged acts in school, it has to in­ves­ti­gate whether he com­mit­ted a crime.

Ali said Po­lice Youth Clubs and the Child Pro­tec­tion Unit have of­fi­cers trained to me­di­ate con­flicts among stu­dents and par­ents and en­gage schools to deal with chal­lenges. Re­cent­ly, the TTPS grant­ed a re­quest from the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion to pa­trol out­side and in the vicin­i­ty of sev­er­al sec­ondary schools prone to reg­u­lar bouts of vi­o­lence since the re­open­ing in April.

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