GUARDIAN ME­DIA NEWS­ROOM

Now that schools have re­opened, the Po­lice Ser­vice says an “all-hands-on-deck” ap­proach is need­ed to en­sure that school chil­dren are kept in line and pre­vent­ed from be­ing abu­sive or dis­rup­tive to oth­ers.

TTPS Le­gal of­fi­cer, Cor­po­ral Za­heer Ali, says every child de­serves care and pro­tec­tion and should have a sense a safe­ty while in and around the school en­vi­ron­ment.

He says de­viant be­hav­iour should be pun­ished to the full ex­tent of the law.

“I want to make a strong call for leg­is­la­tion—like the an­ti-gang, and the of­fences against the per­son where we’re look­ing at as­saults and dan­ger­ous drugs and firearms—to find a way for the stake­hold­ers such as the Chil­dren’s Au­thor­i­ty of Trinidad and To­ba­go,” he rec­om­mends, “to lead this fight to en­sure that our chil­dren in the school sys­tem con­tin­ue to at­tract the lev­el of care and pro­tec­tion that they re­quire.”

“You may have a child whose par­ents may be un­able to con­trol them,” he points out, “but that child is in a par­tic­u­lar do­main [school] and may be im­pact­ing oth­er chil­dren.”

Cor­po­ral Ali says the TTPS, as well as the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion, should work close­ly with the Chil­dren's Au­thor­i­ty to curb school vi­o­lence.