JENSEN LA VENDE

Se­nior Re­porter

jensen.lavende@guardian.co.tt

The stu­dent in­volved in the fight with a teacher at the Ari­ma North Gov­ern­ment Sec­ondary School is now in an af­ter-school pro­gramme run by the po­lice.

The Form Two girl is the on­ly child in­volved in the fight to be placed in the pro­gramme but is ex­pect­ed to be joined by oth­ers soon.

The pro­gramme will of­fer ac­tiv­i­ties sim­i­lar to those de­liv­ered in the TTPS’ Po­lice Youth Club pro­grammes.

Last Wednes­day, the teacher and stu­dent were record­ed in a 38-sec­ond-long video fight­ing and pulling on each oth­er’s hair. The video al­so showed stu­dents try­ing to pull the teacher and stu­dent apart.

Work­ers at the school claimed the stu­dent was not known to be a trou­ble­mak­er and was con­front­ed by the teacher for throw­ing pa­per in class. They claimed the teacher re­port­ed­ly point­ed her hand in the stu­dent’s face, lead­ing to the scuf­fle.

Asked for an up­date on the in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­to the fra­cas yes­ter­day, head of the North­ern Di­vi­sion, Snr Supt Sher­ma May­nard-Wil­son, said the po­lice are yet to com­mence an in­ves­ti­ga­tion, as no of­fi­cial re­port was made.

The in­ci­dent took place three days af­ter armed po­lice of­fi­cers were de­ployed to 60 sec­ondary schools as part of the new School Ori­en­ta­tion Po­lice Unit to com­bat school vi­o­lence.

May­nard-Wil­son said of­fi­cers, in­clud­ing mem­bers of the com­mu­ni­ty po­lice, vis­it­ed the school a day af­ter the in­ci­dent.

While the Na­tion­al Coun­cil of Par­ent Teacher As­so­ci­a­tions was ini­tial­ly against armed of­fi­cers in schools, the as­so­ci­a­tion has changed its po­si­tion since the in­ci­dent.

Speak­ing on CNC3 News’ The Morn­ing Brew, pres­i­dent of the as­so­ci­a­tion, Wal­ter Stew­art, said they had re­viewed the process and were sat­is­fied that “if any­thing is to hap­pen, God for­bid, that the of­fi­cers, in or­der to be able to re­spond rapid­ly to the sit­u­a­tion, there would be need for armed po­lice of­fi­cers in des­ig­nat­ed spe­cif­ic schools. So, we have gone along with that think­ing, that phi­los­o­phy.”

Stew­art added that the of­fi­cers had en­dured in­tense train­ing and the as­so­ci­a­tion be­lieves their non-lethal weapons should be a last re­sort in ad­dress­ing school in­dis­ci­pline. He said the as­so­ci­a­tion is al­so seek­ing in­for­ma­tion on what caused the fight. See page 11