Carisa Lee

Re­porter

Carisa.Lee@cnc3.co.tt

Deputy Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice (DCP) Ju­nior Ben­jamin says the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice (TTPS) is in­ves­ti­gat­ing a fight that oc­curred out­side the Barataria North Sec­ondary School af­ter video footage of the in­ci­dent sur­faced on so­cial me­dia on Tues­day.

While the in­ci­dent, which took place in the vicin­i­ty of Jo­gie Street and Third Av­enue, Barataria, in­clud­ed stu­dents, Ben­jamin said they were look­ing in­to who else was in­volved and what ac­tion could be tak­en.

The two-minute video shows peo­ple out of school uni­form al­so in­volved in the fight.

Res­i­dents and busi­ness own­ers along the stretch were al­so seen in­ter­ven­ing and chas­ing the stu­dents up the street. One woman was armed with a shov­el.

As school end­ed yes­ter­day, po­lice of­fi­cers and mem­bers of the De­fence Force were sta­tioned out­side the com­pound to en­sure an in­ci­dent-free end to the day.

But res­i­dent Er­rol Par­son, who was among those look­ing on, said while those in au­thor­i­ty claimed there had been a de­cline in school vi­o­lence since of­fi­cers were placed at high-risk in­sti­tu­tions, things had in­ten­si­fied on the streets. He said Tues­day’s brawl was one of the worst in­ci­dents he had seen.

“It wasn’t about the school chil­dren, you know, be­cause these guys did not have uni­forms. I don’t know if the school chil­dren bring them in the school, but they start­ed here, and all up to Fifth Street on the Pri­or­i­ty (Bus Route), you see­ing these guys. I don’t know where they came from, but they wasn’t stu­dents,” he said.

Par­son, who has been liv­ing in the area for more than 70 years, said that as el­ders, res­i­dents some­times tried to dis­ci­pline the stu­dents, but most times they were ig­nored.

“When they come on the street, they have no re­spect, and some of them, the kind of lan­guage they us­ing, wow. We al­ways try to cool them, but when you see they take on you, hmm.

“But I doh know, the kids ... some­thing wrong,” he said.

Par­son be­lieves the on­ly peo­ple who could curb the vi­o­lent be­hav­iour of chil­dren were their par­ents.

This is some­thing Ed­u­ca­tion Min­is­ter Dr Michael Dowlath ac­knowl­edged, as he said the min­istry was work­ing with par­ents, com­mu­ni­ty stake­hold­ers, and law en­force­ment to strength­en be­hav­iour­al sup­port sys­tems and pro­mote pos­i­tive stu­dent en­gage­ment.

He as­sured the pub­lic that the min­istry took all mat­ters re­lat­ed to stu­dent safe­ty and dis­ci­pline se­ri­ous­ly and had en­gaged of­fi­cials of the Di­vi­sion of School Su­per­vi­sion. Dowlath al­so said that ex­tra po­lice pa­trols would be con­duct­ed at sev­er­al pri­or­i­ty schools be­gin­ning to­day.

For­mer ed­u­ca­tion min­is­ter Dr Nyan Gads­by-Dol­ly called out Dowlath for what she de­scribed as a lack of re­sponse and ur­gency from his min­istry to curb school vi­o­lence, which she be­lieved was on the rise.

“His si­lence and ap­par­ent lethar­gy are un­ac­cept­able,” she said.

“What is his re­sponse to ques­tions posed by the me­dia on this trou­bling is­sue? The MOE has sud­den­ly gone very dark and silent.”

The for­mer min­is­ter said stu­dents de­served bet­ter lead­er­ship and ac­tion.