Shane Su­perville

Se­nior Re­porter

shane.su­perville@guardian.co.tt

Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Al­lis­ter Gue­var­ro says he has pro­posed the in­tro­duc­tion of a po­lice cadet pro­gramme in sec­ondary schools, which he hopes will ad­dress school in­dis­ci­pline while pro­vid­ing a pos­i­tive out­let for young peo­ple.

Speak­ing with Guardian Me­dia af­ter vol­un­teer­ing to speak with chil­dren at the Laven­tille Open Bible Church in Suc­cess Vil­lage, Laven­tille, on Sat­ur­day, Gue­var­ro said he sub­mit­ted the pro­pos­al to the Gov­ern­ment as part of a wider suite of com­mu­ni­ty-based crime-fight­ing ini­tia­tives.

He said the pro­gramme would be sim­i­lar to the Cadet Force cur­rent­ly op­er­at­ed by the T&T De­fence Force, but with a spe­cif­ic fo­cus on “lead­er­ship, polic­ing, and law-en­force­ment type skills.”

“It would be an op­por­tu­ni­ty lost if, while we are us­ing the school-ori­ent­ed polic­ing pro­gramme, we are not able to in­cul­cate an of­fi­cer-cadet pro­gramme with­in it, so that at some point in time we can re­place po­lice in schools by hav­ing that pro­gramme as the means of main­tain­ing dis­ci­pline,” he said.

“So I’m hop­ing that at some point in the new year, and post the State of Emer­gency, we are able to make some strides in bring­ing that on stream.”

Dur­ing the hour-long con­ver­sa­tion with the chil­dren—who are mem­bers of the Boys’ Brigade, an in­ter­na­tion­al Chris­t­ian youth group—Gue­var­ro shared sto­ries from his own up­bring­ing while urg­ing the youths to stay away from crime and dan­ger­ous be­hav­iour.

He re­mind­ed them that chil­dren can still face pros­e­cu­tion once they are over the age of eight, as the law may deem them ca­pa­ble of un­der­stand­ing their ac­tions.

Gue­var­ro told Guardian Me­dia that al­though there is no sta­tis­ti­cal da­ta con­firm­ing whether youth in­volve­ment in crime is ris­ing, he em­pha­sised that chil­dren must be guid­ed away from crim­i­nal in­flu­ences.

“There is in­tel­li­gence sug­gest­ing that peo­ple still mis­tak­en­ly be­lieve young peo­ple can­not be charged,” he said. “That’s one of the mes­sages I brought to this group to­day… If you are not doli in­ca­pax and you are over eight years old, and you can dif­fer­en­ti­ate be­tween right and wrong, you can be crim­i­nal­ly li­able be­fore a court.”

He al­so urged par­ents and guardians to take an ac­tive in­ter­est in their chil­dren’s so­cial cir­cles and to mon­i­tor their school­bags. Par­ents, he said, are their chil­dren’s “first line of de­fence” against ex­po­sure to gangs.

Through­out the ses­sion, Gue­var­ro en­cour­aged the boys to think be­fore they act and to walk away from con­flict, re­mind­ing them that re­spond­ing to vi­o­lence with vi­o­lence of­ten leads to even greater trou­ble.