Akash Sama­roo

akash.sama­roo@cnc3.co.tt

Lead Ed­i­tor Pol­i­tics

Po­lice of­fi­cers as­signed to main­tain or­der at 50 “high-risk” sec­ondary schools from Mon­day have been warned that any of­fi­cer found en­gag­ing in in­ap­pro­pri­ate con­duct with stu­dents will face the full brunt of the law.

Yes­ter­day, 95 Spe­cial Re­serve Po­lice (SRP) of­fi­cers grad­u­at­ed from the School-Ori­ent­ed Polic­ing Course at the Po­lice Acad­e­my in St James. These of­fi­cers are set to take up du­ty in schools on Mon­day as Gov­ern­ment seeks to con­trol vi­o­lence amongst the stu­dent pop­u­la­tions.

Speak­ing with Guardian Me­dia af­ter the cer­e­mo­ny, Deputy Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice (Op­er­a­tions) Ju­nior Ben­jamin, who is the point per­son for this project, said he ad­dressed of­fi­cers on main­tain­ing ap­pro­pri­ate in­ter­ac­tions with stu­dents.

“I want to tell you that I threw down the gaunt­let where that is con­cerned. I made it very clear that we are go­ing to con­duct our­selves pro­fes­sion­al­ly. Any­one found com­mit­ting any of­fences, es­pe­cial­ly with chil­dren, they are go­ing to be treat­ed with the full brunt of the law,” Ben­jamin said.

DCP Ben­jamin added, “We have to start with our of­fi­cers and let them un­der­stand the se­ri­ous­ness that they are en­ter­ing in­to. This is not for games, we are there for a job and we’re go­ing to do a job with­out fear or favour, mal­ice or ill will and we are go­ing to do it with a lev­el of pride, pro­fes­sion­al­ism, re­spect, in­tegri­ty, dig­ni­ty and ex­cel­lence.”

Ac­cord­ing to a me­dia re­lease from the Trinidad and To­ba­go Po­lice Ser­vice (TTPS), the 95 of­fi­cers were trained in: Fun­da­men­tals of Child and Ado­les­cent De­vel­op­ment, Chil­dren Jus­tice Pro­ce­dures, Al­ter­na­tive Dis­pute Res­o­lu­tion, the Role and Func­tion of the Po­lice in a School En­vi­ron­ment and Com­mu­ni­ty Polic­ing with­in Schools.

DCP Ben­jamin said the TTPS will use this week­end to as­cer­tain which schools will be as­signed gun-car­ry­ing of­fi­cers.

“To re­al­ly even say off the bat that yes, we want to see the Laven­tille area or this oth­er one would be ones that for sure would have (armed of­fi­cers), we’re not re­al­ly want­i­ng to do that even right now and at the same time too, I don’t want to put it out there so that our per­sons can al­so be tar­gets.”

He asked for pa­tience dur­ing the first week of this ini­tia­tive and be­lieves by week two of the new aca­d­e­m­ic year, all of the teething prob­lems will be rec­ti­fied.

Ben­jamin al­so ex­plained that for co-ed­u­ca­tion schools where both male and fe­male stu­dents are taught to­geth­er, the TTPS will be as­sign­ing a male and fe­male of­fi­cer.

He added that of­fi­cers with lethal and non-lethal weapons have been re­mind­ed of the TTPS’ “Use of Force” pol­i­cy.

“We are go­ing to en­sure the Use of Force Pol­i­cy, where it starts with de-es­ca­la­tion and then us­ing the less lethal be­fore we get to any stage and we don’t re­al­ly fore­see that that would be done in terms of us­ing the lethal, but we’re just say­ing in the event that it needs to be used, it will be used in re­la­tion to the Use of Force Pol­i­cy, where it is the last re­sort and it’s on­ly to de­fend the lives of our stu­dents teach­ers even vis­i­tors and or the po­lice of­fi­cer’s life.”

The 95 spe­cial­ly trained SRP of­fi­cers will be strength­ened by 25 Com­mu­ni­ty Polic­ing Of­fi­cers trained as field train­ing of­fi­cers.

Dowlath con­firms of­fi­cers

will have guns

Af­ter some un­cer­tain­ty over whether po­lice of­fi­cers sta­tioned at high-risk schools would be armed, Ed­u­ca­tion Min­is­ter Dr Michael Dowlath yes­ter­day con­firmed they will be.

Speak­ing to the me­dia fol­low­ing a cer­e­mo­ny to com­mem­o­rate the grant­i­ng of gov­ern­ment- as­sist­ed sta­tus to the Long­denville Sathya Sai Pri­ma­ry School, Dowlath said, “As we in­di­cat­ed yes­ter­day, of­fi­cers would be in their full kits. Some of their kits will have lethal and some will have non-lethal weapons with them, de­pend­ing on the po­lice as­sess­ment of the risk of the school and its en­vi­ron­ment.”

For clar­i­ty, Guardian Me­dia asked, “And by lethal you mean firearms.”

“Yes,” the min­is­ter re­spond­ed.

At Thurs­day’s post-Cab­i­net news brief­ing, Dowlath was asked if the of­fi­cers would be armed. How­ev­er, Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Alexan­der in­ter­ject­ed, say­ing, “What I can tell you is this for sure, that those of­fi­cers will be giv­en non-lethal equip­ment that they can re­spond with in an ef­fec­tive man­ner.”

Pressed on whether the of­fi­cers would be armed, he said, “Well again, non-lethal weapons that they can be able to car­ry out their du­ties ef­fec­tive­ly.”

Asked yes­ter­day why the lack of clar­i­ty in their mes­sag­ing, Dowlath said, “I think that you see when you are im­ple­ment­ing some­thing new, you have to un­der­stand that as you go through, as you start a plan and you im­ple­ment some­thing, some­times changes have to be made. One of the things I told you all is that we are try­ing not to as­sign a par­tic­u­lar stig­ma to a school while we are bring­ing up the en­vi­ron­ment al­ready safe and se­cure.”

But Dowlath said the Gov­ern­ment is hop­ing that “in the near fu­ture”, they will no longer need this “ex­tra lay­er of se­cu­ri­ty” at schools.

He added that in six months, Cab­i­net will be pro­vid­ed with a re­port on the ef­fec­tive­ness of the ini­tia­tive.

NPTA, TTUTA ob­ject to move

Two key ed­u­ca­tion stake­hold­ers are still not on board with the Gov­ern­ment’s plan to put armed of­fi­cers in some schools.

Na­tion­al Par­ent Teach­ers As­so­ci­a­tion (NPTA) pres­i­dent Wal­ter Stew­art told Guardian Me­dia, “There is that au­ra of un­cer­tain­ty, au­ra of trep­i­da­tion, au­ra of fear, which we can do with­out. The stu­dents and teach­ers are al­ready un­der stress and we don’t want to fur­ther stress them out with armed po­lice of­fi­cers on the com­pound.”

Mean­while, Trinidad and To­ba­go Uni­fied Teach­ers’ As­so­ci­a­tion (TTUTA) pres­i­dent Mar­tin Lum Kin said, “We un­der­stand the in­tent and the na­ture by which they are plac­ing these of­fi­cers, but we be­lieve that armed of­fi­cers should not be at our na­tion’s schools if the TTPS is hav­ing a tem­po­rary post out­side the school and armed of­fi­cers are placed there, that’s fine, but on­ly schools com­pound. We do not sup­port hav­ing those per­sons armed.”

In ad­di­tion to a spe­cial unit of po­lice of­fi­cers as­signed to 50 pri­or­i­ty sec­ondary schools through­out the coun­try, there will al­so be ded­i­cat­ed pa­trols for ten pri­ma­ry and ten sec­ondary schools to en­sure con­sis­tent cov­er­age.