SHAR­LENE RAM­PER­SAD
 
One day af­ter a To­bag­on­ian school­boy al­leged­ly made threats to “shoot up” his school, the Trinidad and To­ba­go Po­lice Ser­vice (TTPS) says they stand ready to re­spond in the event of such a tragedy.

Speak­ing dur­ing a TTPS press con­fer­ence on Thurs­day morn­ing at the Po­lice Ad­min­is­tra­tion Build­ing in Port of Spain, pub­lic in­for­ma­tion of­fi­cer Sheri­don Hill said there are “ma­jor in­ci­dent re­sponse” plans in place.

“There are cer­tain pro­to­cols, we have well-es­tab­lished pol­i­cy for ma­jor in­ci­dents in Trinidad and To­ba­go. The Trinidad and To­ba­go po­lice ser­vice has its role and oth­er stake­hold­ers have their roles to per­form,” Hill said.

Ac­cord­ing to a re­port in an­oth­er dai­ly news­pa­per, a 17-year-old stu­dent of the Pen­te­costal Light and Life Foun­da­tion High School in To­ba­go al­leged­ly made threats to shoot up the school.

The boy was barred from sit­ting the CSEC Math­e­mat­ics ex­am­i­na­tion be­ing held at the school af­ter teach­ers re­port­ed he was “dis­rup­tive and dis­re­spect­ful.” The boy's threats were lat­er re­port­ed to the po­lice.

On Thurs­day, Hill said po­lice were con­cerned about the threat of a school shoot­ing, es­pe­cial­ly in light of re­cent dead­ly school shoot­ings in the Unit­ed States.

“Of course, we are con­cerned about these in­ci­dents and we cer­tain­ly hope they don’t hap­pen here but we are al­ways con­cerned about those in­ci­dents and we will pay par­tic­u­lar at­ten­tion to our schools, es­pe­cial­ly in light of the re­cent in­ci­dent and the re­cent re­ports,” Hill said.