A 13-year-old stu­dent of the Coryal Sec­ondary School, Cu­mu­to, has been charged with pos­ses­sion of mar­i­jua­na for the pur­pose of traf­fick­ing.

The Form One stu­dent was the first per­son to be charged by of­fi­cers from the new­ly formed School Ori­ent­ed Polic­ing Unit (SOPU).

The unit, which is re­spon­si­ble for as­sign­ing po­lice of­fi­cers to 62 high-risk sec­ondary schools, is work­ing along­side the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion to main­tain law and or­der.

The stu­dent, who lives in Mal­abar, Ari­ma, was de­tained on Wednes­day around 11.30 am at the school, af­ter a po­lice of­fi­cer re­ceived cer­tain in­for­ma­tion and ap­proached him.

As the stu­dent emp­tied his pock­ets, a small pack­age con­tain­ing 1.6 grams of plant-like ma­te­r­i­al re­sem­bling mar­i­jua­na and sev­er­al pieces of brown wrap­ping pa­per was re­trieved.

The stu­dent was then de­tained by school of­fi­cials, who con­tact­ed his par­ents, of­fi­cers from the Cu­mu­to Po­lice Sta­tion and the Com­mu­ni­ty Ori­ent­ed Polic­ing Sec­tion.

Head of the SOPU, Deputy Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice, Op­er­a­tions, Ju­nior Ben­jamin, yes­ter­day re­in­forced the call by Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Al­lis­ter Gue­var­ro for par­ents and guardians to pay clos­er at­ten­tion to what their chil­dren had in their school bags.

He said the re­cep­tion of po­lice of­fi­cers in schools had gone bet­ter than ex­pect­ed, but ad­mit­ted, “There will be some who will want to test the sys­tem and see how far they can push.”

Mean­while, a video post­ed to so­cial me­dia yes­ter­day, in which a fe­male Preysal Sec­ondary School stu­dent was seen ver­bal­ly dis­re­spect­ing a po­lice of­fi­cer, is cur­rent­ly un­der in­ves­ti­ga­tion.

On Tues­day, a stu­dent of that same school was sus­pend­ed af­ter an of­fi­cer was locked in a class­room last Fri­day.

Re­gard­ing the lat­est in­ci­dent, Guardian Me­dia un­der­stands the record­ing cap­tured the tail-end of a sit­u­a­tion which be­gan as the girl wait­ed in line for her bag to be searched. The school man­dates that the bags of all stu­dents be searched as they en­ter the school.

The girl be­came un­ruly and dis­rup­tive while await­ing her turn and al­leged­ly took of­fence af­ter school of­fi­cials cau­tioned her about wear­ing the prop­er school uni­form.

As she be­gan shout­ing and rais­ing her voice to school of­fi­cials, a plain­clothes po­lice of­fi­cer in­ter­vened and warned the girl about her be­hav­iour, be­fore a fe­male dean stepped in and led the girl to the of­fice. It was this ex­change that was cap­tured and post­ed on­line.