SASCHA WIL­SON

& AN­NA-LISA PAUL

At least one stu­dent from the Preysal Sec­ondary School has been sus­pend­ed for lock­ing a po­lice of­fi­cer in a class­room.

This was re­vealed yes­ter­day by the Par­ents Teach­ers As­so­ci­a­tion (PTA) pres­i­dent, Kris Balka­rans­ingh. Deputy Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice (DCP) Op­er­a­tions, Ju­nior Ben­jamin, is ex­pect­ed to re­ceive a re­port on the in­ci­dent to­day, af­ter which he will de­ter­mine what ac­tion can be tak­en against the stu­dent or stu­dents re­spon­si­ble.

Balka­rans­ingh con­firmed that the in­ci­dent oc­curred last Fri­day, but said he could not pro­vide fur­ther de­tails as the school has not is­sued any of­fi­cial com­mu­ni­ca­tion on the mat­ter.

It is un­der­stood that the of­fi­cer was in a class­room when the door was closed and locked from the out­side by stu­dents. Af­ter the of­fi­cer raised an alarm, it took teach­ers at least 30 min­utes to un­lock the door and free him.

Preysal Sec­ondary School was among the high-risk schools where po­lice of­fi­cers were as­signed at the start of the new school term, which be­gan last Mon­day, in an at­tempt to clamp down on in­dis­ci­pline and vi­o­lence. Guardian Me­dia was told that the two male of­fi­cers as­signed to the school were us­ing the Span­ish class­room since that teacher is on leave. At least one stu­dent, who has been sus­pend­ed for the in­ci­dent, re­port­ed­ly claimed to school of­fi­cials that the of­fi­cer was sleep­ing when the door was closed.

In a tele­phone in­ter­view yes­ter­day, Balka­rans­ingh said he sup­port­ed a po­lice pres­ence in schools even be­fore the Gov­ern­ment made the an­nounce­ment.

“The ac­tions that took place on Fri­day is strong­ly con­demned by the PTA ex­ec­u­tive of the Preysal Sec­ondary School. We do not sup­port or con­done those types of ac­tions. Chil­dren need to show re­spect for au­thor­i­ty and el­ders, and the PTA will al­so sup­port what­ev­er nec­es­sary but rea­son­able dis­ci­pline is tak­en against the per­pe­tra­tors of the said act.”

Balka­rans­ingh, how­ev­er, called for of­fi­cers as­signed to schools to be equipped with body cam­eras and prop­er­ly trained to han­dle stu­dents.

He said, “We are be­ing told that the of­fi­cers at­tached to the Preysal School are ac­tu­al­ly re­cruits from the bar­racks and not full-fledged of­fi­cers who would have gone through all the train­ing on how to deal with chil­dren and dif­fer­ent sit­u­a­tions. Al­so, I am be­ing told that the of­fi­cers have no body cams, and they are male of­fi­cers, so there­fore, if a fight or some­thing takes place with fe­male stu­dents, there is a lot of ques­tions and a lot of re­stric­tions.”

When con­tact­ed, Ed­u­ca­tion Min­is­ter Dr Michael Dowlath said he was at­tend­ing a func­tion and would check the mes­sages sent by Guardian Me­dia via What­sApp, but up to late evening no re­sponse was re­ceived.

How­ev­er, DCP Ben­jamin, who is the li­ai­son of­fi­cer for the School Ori­ent­ed Polic­ing Unit, said he met yes­ter­day with As­sis­tant Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice (ACP) Spe­cialised Sup­port, Bri­an Sood­een, and ASP David Guel­mo of the Com­mu­ni­ty Polic­ing Unit to con­duct a post-mortem on how the week-long ini­tia­tive has been work­ing.

He said, “We will be look­ing at all in­ci­dents and check­ing to see how ef­fec­tive the mea­sures have been and what can be done to im­prove go­ing for­ward.”

Ben­jamin said the in­ci­dent at Preysal Sec­ondary School was un­der in­ves­ti­ga­tion, and he is ex­pect­ed to re­ceive a re­port on it to­day. “The mat­ter is en­gag­ing our at­ten­tion, and we will con­tin­ue to work to get to the bot­tom of it.”