An­na-Lisa Paul

Armed po­lice had to be called in to re­store or­der fol­low­ing a se­ries of fights at the South East Port-of-Spain Sec­ondary school (SE­PoS) yes­ter­day.

A ma­jor fight broke out at around 12.35 pm at the Nel­son Street, Port-of-Spain school, lead­ing to six oth­er skir­mish­es there­after through­out the af­ter­noon.

Dur­ing one of the oth­er in­ci­dents af­ter po­lice ar­rived at the school, one stu­dent was pep­per-sprayed by the of­fi­cers af­ter she re­fused to de­sist from act­ing in an ag­gres­sive man­ner to­wards the law­men and oth­er stu­dents.

One stu­dent al­so had to re­ceive med­ical treat­ment at hos­pi­tal af­ter suf­fer­ing an asth­ma at­tack as a re­sult of the in­ci­dents.

When Guardian Me­dia vis­it­ed the school around 2 pm, stu­dents were be­ing ush­ered out of the com­pound by of­fi­cers from the In­ter Agency Task Force, who were al­so joined by per­son­nel from the Besson Street Po­lice Sta­tion.

One male stu­dent claimed the ini­tial fight be­gan af­ter Form Five girls be­gan fight­ing with Form Two girls. While he was un­able to say what trig­gered the fight, he ex­pressed fear that fur­ther in­ci­dents could re­sult in in­no­cent stu­dents sus­tain­ing in­juries.

The prin­ci­pal lat­er de­clined to speak with the me­dia.

The in­ci­dent fol­lows an­oth­er one at the Tabaquite Sec­ondary School on March 3, where po­lice were al­so called to in­ter­vene af­ter a se­ries of fights oc­curred there.

Dur­ing one in­ci­dent which was record­ed and post­ed to so­cial me­dia, a fe­male stu­dent was seen re­sist­ing a fe­male se­cu­ri­ty guard.

A 16-year-old stu­dent’s front teeth were lat­er dam­aged af­ter she was struck in the face sev­er­al times dur­ing one of the fights.

Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Fitzger­ald Hinds last week said he was dis­turbed by the grow­ing num­ber of fights plagu­ing the ed­u­ca­tion sys­tem.