An­na-Lisa Paul

Po­lice of­fi­cers are to be as­signed to sec­ondary schools in the Five Rivers dis­trict from next week, to main­tain or­der at the be­gin­ning and end of the school day and en­sure op­er­a­tions are not marred by vi­o­lence.

An­nounc­ing this dur­ing a con­fi­dence pa­trol in Five Rivers yes­ter­day, As­sis­tant Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice (ACP) North East, Wayne Mys­tar, said it was part of the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice (TTPS) ef­fort to re­store pub­lic faith and re­gain com­mu­ni­ties from gang el­e­ments.

Speak­ing with re­porters as he ex­it­ed the Five Rivers Sec­ondary School along Range Road around noon, fol­low­ing an im­promp­tu vis­it with the prin­ci­pal, he ex­plained it was an in­te­gral part of the com­mu­ni­ty ap­pa­ra­tus and in re­la­tion to school vi­o­lence, it was im­por­tant to let their pres­ence be felt and seen.

“I am in the process of as­sign­ing po­lice of­fi­cers to schools, so we will have a par­tic­u­lar of­fi­cer adopt­ing a school if you will and that po­lice of­fi­cer will go to those schools and work with the prin­ci­pals and deans and stu­dents to bring mean­ing­ful so­lu­tions to end school vi­o­lence, bul­ly­ing and so on,” Mys­tar said.

He ad­mit­ted that in some ar­eas with­in Five Rivers, there were chal­lenges with gang ac­tiv­i­ties.

How­ev­er, he as­sured, “We have been gath­er­ing a lot of in­tel­li­gence to deal with gangs in that area, so part of the walk-about is to let the pub­lic know that the TTPS is re­claim­ing some of the so-called ar­eas that these gangs want to claim. Our main pri­or­i­ty is to en­sure that we bring se­cu­ri­ty and safe­ty to mem­bers of the pub­lic, so this is just the start of a lot of dif­fer­ent things we will be do­ing.”

On the is­sue of school vi­o­lence, Mys­tar said, “I want to let per­sons know that we have adopt­ed a ze­ro (tol­er­ance) pol­i­cy as it re­lates to school vi­o­lence. “Per­sons who en­gage in school vi­o­lence may find them­selves be­ing ar­rest­ed and may find them­selves be­fore the courts, so we are ad­vis­ing chil­dren to be on their best be­hav­iours.”

To the par­ents, he en­cour­aged, “If you have is­sues with your chil­dren, the TTPS is avail­able and you can come to us and ask for as­sis­tance. We have our com­mu­ni­ty polic­ing of­fi­cers who can work with these chil­dren, the Vic­tim Sup­port Unit, the Child Pro­tec­tion Unit...so we are ask­ing par­ents to seek that help.”

He urged par­ents not to en­gage in their own forms of jus­tice.

“There is an in­stance where a par­ent went to a school on their own and that end­ed very mess­i­ly. So, if there is an is­sue, the TTPS is avail­able for all coun­selling and as­sis­tance.”

Mys­tar said he is hope­ful the out­reach ini­tia­tive will mo­ti­vate per­sons to co­op­er­ate with the po­lice, adding he this may re­sult in a dif­fer­ence in the crime sit­u­a­tion.

“We need the as­sis­tance of the pub­lic. It’s a part­ner­ship and once they help us, we will sup­port them and to­geth­er we can see this through.”

Asked if the pa­trol yes­ter­day was in align­ment with Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Er­la Hare­wood-Christo­pher’s crime plan, Mys­tar said, “The CoP would have laid out her strate­gic plan for 2023...one of them be­ing pre­ci­sion polic­ing, and one of the main ar­eas she would have put fo­cus on was com­mu­ni­ty part­ner­ships to en­sure that we ac­tu­al­ly re­store con­fi­dence with­in the so­ci­ety.

“The idea is to en­gage with mem­bers of the com­mu­ni­ty, and mem­bers of the pub­lic, and to get a sense of how we are per­form­ing and what fur­ther ser­vices we can pro­vide to make them feel much safer.”

Mys­tar said more at­ten­tion was be­ing paid to high pri­or­i­ty of­fend­ers who are hell bent on cre­at­ing fear among the pop­u­lace.

He said they will em­ploy­ing greater in­tel­li­gence to catch these per­pe­tra­tors.

“We want to put to­geth­er prop­er cas­es to put them be­fore the courts, and let them face the con­se­quences of the law.”

Mys­tar said mur­ders, wound­ings/shoot­ings and the oc­ca­sion­al rob­beries were the main crime is­sues in the Five Rivers com­mu­ni­ty.

Dur­ing the walk­a­bout along Spring Road, the of­fi­cers stopped a B15 car they be­lieved to be stolen. Af­ter checks with the re­port­ed own­er did not put the of­fi­cers at ease, the car was wrecked and tak­en to the Arou­ca Po­lice Sta­tion, where two per­sons were ques­tioned.

Mys­tar lat­er said be­cause ve­hi­cle lar­ce­ny was the sec­ond high­est crime in the coun­try, with ap­prox­i­mate­ly 1,000 ve­hi­cles hav­ing been stolen in the last three years across the coun­try, they had to ex­er­cise ex­treme vig­i­lance on this mat­ter.

Dur­ing the walk­a­bout, two fe­male res­i­dents at Jit­man Dri­ve Ex­ten­sion ap­plaud­ed the po­lice ini­tia­tive, which they said was a pleas­ant sur­prise that had made them feel safe.

One woman said, “More pa­trols are need­ed.”

Leroy Vic­tor slowed his car as he reached the of­fi­cers. He said, “I feel good about that. It feel safer for me be­cause I is a busi­ness­man. And it very safe for me be­cause a lot of crime hap­pens. I had a busi­ness in the area here and I had to close it down be­cause of the crime. There was al­ways shoot­ings every week. Drugs sell­ing all the time. So, I’m glad.”