RHON­DOR DOWLAT

Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice-des­ig­nate Er­la Hare­wood-Christo­pher was a no-show at an event she was due to fea­ture again yes­ter­day, this time at an event host­ed by the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice’s Vic­tim and Sup­port Unit at the Rose­hill RC School in Laven­tille.

On Wednes­day, Hare­wood-Christo­pher was ab­sent from a Joint Se­lect Com­mit­tee (JSC) ses­sion of the Par­lia­ment on Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty. She gave mat­ters of na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty as the rea­son for her ab­sence to chair­man of the com­mit­tee, Kei­th Scot­land.

For the sec­ond day run­ning yes­ter­day, Hare­wood-Christo­pher dis­ap­point­ed those ex­pect­ing to see her, as she was in­vit­ed to be one of the fea­tured speak­ers at the crit­i­cal launch of the Who’s Writ­ing Your Sto­ry ini­tia­tive.

Supt Claire Guy-Al­leyne, head of the TTPS’ Gen­der-Based Vi­o­lence Unit, who was sent to rep­re­sent the top CoP-elect, con­firmed her ab­sence, say­ing that it could not be helped.

“The CoP was un­avoid­ably ab­sent due to an­oth­er meet­ing that she had to host this morn­ing (yes­ter­day). You know she’s a very im­por­tant per­son at this time when it comes to na­tion­al is­sues rel­a­tive to se­cu­ri­ty,” Guy-Al­leyne said.

“We have Car­ni­val, which is go­ing to be the Moth­er of (all) Car­ni­vals, and we need, with­in the TTPS, to put all mea­sures and en­sure that we have a very safe Car­ni­val. So now is a very im­por­tant time for the Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice,” she added.

Guy-Al­leyne, how­ev­er, not­ed that Hare­wood-Christo­pher ful­ly en­dors­es pro­grammes that are geared to­wards deal­ing with chil­dren.

In No­vem­ber last year, Hare­wood-Christo­pher, then act­ing Deputy Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice, vis­it­ed the Rose­hill RC pri­ma­ry school, af­ter pupils were record­ed duck­ing for cov­er un­der desks in their class­room when ri­val gangs opened fire near­by in the com­mu­ni­ty.

The pro­gramme launched yes­ter­day tar­gets the nine-14 age group.

Speak­ing with mem­bers of the me­dia, Head of the Vic­tim and Wit­ness Sup­port Unit, Aisha Price-Cor­bie, said the pro­gramme was cre­at­ed specif­i­cal­ly for Rose­hill Pri­ma­ry School and be­cause of its suc­cess, will now be ex­pand­ed to oth­er schools in East Port-of-Spain.

“So far, we have had sig­nif­i­cant trac­tion with the chil­dren, and in terms of them be­ing more at­ten­tive and ap­ply­ing them­selves to the school con­tent. But more so, what we no­tice with these, it pro­vides a space for them to feel that safe­ty—a num­ber of them have very trau­mat­ic ex­pe­ri­ences that they go through in their lives cur­rent­ly, or they may have gone through be­fore,” Price-Cor­bie said.

“It is a space where per­sons can ac­tu­al­ly share and re­port cer­tain in­stances, un­for­tu­nate­ly of crime, that chil­dren are ex­pe­ri­enc­ing, dif­fer­ent abus­es they have been ex­pe­ri­enc­ing. So, those are the ar­eas we’re hop­ing to have sig­nif­i­cant trac­tion in deal­ing with the trau­ma that the chil­dren are go­ing through while in school,” she added.

The ob­jec­tives of this pro­gramme are: to pro­vide pos­i­tive al­ter­na­tives to crim­i­nal ac­tiv­i­ties; ed­u­cate par­tic­i­pants on push and pull fac­tors of crim­i­nal ac­tiv­i­ty; equip par­tic­i­pants with healthy cop­ing mech­a­nisms; pro­mote and im­prove par­ent-child re­la­tion­ships; pro­vide par­tic­i­pants with ef­fec­tive com­mu­ni­ca­tion skills and re­la­tion­ship-build­ing; pro­vide in­creased aware­ness of emo­tion­al in­tel­li­gence; and to im­prove the par­tic­i­pants’ un­der­stand­ing of fi­nan­cial plan­ning.

Al­so speak­ing at the event were Snr Supt Roger Alexan­der and Port-of-Spain MP Kei­th Scot­land, who both shared their own re­spec­tive tes­ti­mo­ni­als and en­cour­aged the chil­dren to get their ed­u­ca­tion and to learn from life’s lessons in achiev­ing their goals.