DA­REECE PO­LO

Se­nior Re­porter

da­reece.po­lo@guardian.co.ttt

Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Er­la Hare­wood-Christo­pher has com­plained that the Trinidad and To­ba­go Po­lice Ser­vice (TTPS) is fac­ing un­fair ex­pec­ta­tions from a pub­lic that de­mands that it push­es back against crim­i­nal el­e­ments who should have been bet­ter par­ent­ed.

Speak­ing at the launch of the 2023 edi­tion of the Na­tion­al Par­ent­ing Pro­gramme by the Min­istry of So­cial De­vel­op­ment and Fam­i­ly Ser­vices at the Bel­mont Com­mu­ni­ty Cen­tre, Jern­ing­ham Av­enue, Bel­mont, Port-of-Spain, Hare­wood-Christo­pher said par­ent­ing re­mains a root cause or con­trib­u­to­ry fac­tor to vi­o­lence and crim­i­nal­i­ty lo­cal­ly. She said it all starts at home and com­plained that par­ents’ fail­ings are made the re­spon­si­bil­i­ty of law en­force­ment of­fi­cials.

“What we are con­front­ed with is an un­re­al­is­tic ex­pec­ta­tion that the po­lice can some­how mirac­u­lous­ly trans­form the propen­si­ty, the dis­po­si­tion, the be­hav­iours of peo­ple with crim­i­nal in­tent. How prac­ti­cal a propo­si­tion is that? Polic­ing is not a sub­sti­tute to par­ent­ing,” she said.

“The po­lice as the law en­force­ment agency has its very def­i­nite role of en­sur­ing the laws are en­forced and that any in­frac­tions are de­tect­ed and pros­e­cut­ed. That role in a con­scious so­ci­ety will have an ef­fect on de­ter­ring and pre­vent­ing crime but there’s al­so a very def­i­nite and per­haps more im­por­tant role to be per­formed by par­ents and guardians in the nur­tur­ing of our young peo­ple and this role re­quires very de­lib­er­ate ac­tions,” she added.

The Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er al­so not­ed that in­tol­er­ance, dis­re­spect and in­sub­or­di­na­tion are ram­pant in schools, cul­mi­nat­ing in vi­o­lence among stu­dents, to­wards teach­ers and se­cu­ri­ty of­fi­cers. She said this break­down al­so oc­curs with­in homes where par­ents ap­pear to be re­lin­quish­ing their au­thor­i­ty to chil­dren.

Hare­wood-Christo­pher lament­ed that com­mu­ni­ty el­ders no longer in­volve them­selves in rais­ing chil­dren as they some­times face “vi­o­lent ob­jec­tion” from par­ents. She said adults now avoid rep­ri­mand­ing de­viant be­hav­iour in even the youngest of chil­dren. The bad be­hav­iour then es­ca­lates in­to of­fences that are pun­ish­able by law.

“Whether the of­fend­er sur­vives or ends up dead, the whole of so­ci­ety then cries out to the po­lice to solve the prob­lem. By then it is too late,” she said.

The top cop fur­ther urged par­ents to live by ex­am­ple and to take their task of rais­ing the na­tion’s fu­ture more se­ri­ous­ly.

“Your chil­dren are learn­ing from what you do. What you do and how you do it makes a dif­fer­ence. Teach your chil­dren re­spect.

Teach them to have a right sense of val­ues. Be in­volved. We need adults to be in­volved in their child’s life. Be­ing in­volved takes time and hard work and may even re­quire a re­ar­rang­ing of your pri­or­i­ties. It fre­quent­ly means sac­ri­fic­ing what you do for the sake and wel­fare of your child. When par­ents be­come an ab­sen­tee, or ne­glect their chil­dren, they cre­ate a va­can­cy for some­one else to fill and too of­ten it is filled by per­sons of ill re­pute with the wrong in­flu­ence,” she said.

Cox: Gang lead­ers ‘sur­ro­gate dads’

So­cial De­vel­op­ment Min­is­ter Don­na Cox agreed that ab­sent par­ents are a huge part of Trinidad and To­ba­go’s prob­lems, call­ing gang lead­ers “sur­ro­gate dads” and tablets or cell­phones “sur­ro­gate moms”.

“In a sit­u­a­tion where all of us are long­ing to be­long to some­thing or some­one, it is not a dif­fi­cult leap to see why so many of our young peo­ple are now falling prey to lives of de­struc­tion oc­ca­sioned by their sur­ro­gate par­ents - the drug or the gang lead­ers or the tablet and the phones,” she said.

Cox said de­spite these is­sues, the Na­tion­al Par­ent­ing Pro­gramme of­fers hope as in the past four years, 1,029 par­ents have ben­e­fit­ed from it.

Mean­while, at the end of the con­fer­ence, when Guardian Me­dia at­tempt­ed to in­ter­view Hare­wood-Christo­pher about re­cent crimes, she re­fused to an­swer ques­tions, putting her hands up to ges­tic­u­late “no” and walk­ing away.