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Saturday, May 10, 2025

Senior cop tells Diego residents at TTPS town meeting: Take charge of your children

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771 days ago
20230329
Senior Supt of the Western Division Garvin Sean Henry, left, and ACP Collis Hazel at the police town meeting at Wendy Fitzwilliams Boulevard, Diamond Vale, Diego Martin, on Wednesday.

Senior Supt of the Western Division Garvin Sean Henry, left, and ACP Collis Hazel at the police town meeting at Wendy Fitzwilliams Boulevard, Diamond Vale, Diego Martin, on Wednesday.

ANISTO ALVES

A scold­ing for Diego Mar­tin res­i­dents as the Trinidad and To­ba­go Po­lice Ser­vice (TTPS) plead­ed with par­ents to “take charge of their homes” if they are tru­ly se­ri­ous about tack­ling gang vi­o­lence and ju­ve­nile delin­quen­cy.

At a West­ern Di­vi­sion town meet­ing on Wednes­day at the Cen­tral Diego Mar­tin Com­mu­ni­ty Cen­tre, res­i­dents com­plained to the po­lice about a wide range of is­sues, from a lack of pa­trols to is­sues with garbage, fire­works and loud mu­sic.

How­ev­er, when asked what the TTPS is do­ing to ar­rest gang vi­o­lence and young peo­ple join­ing gangs, As­sis­tant Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice (ACP) Col­lis Hazel asked what they were do­ing to con­trol their chil­dren.

“Since when can’t we talk to our chil­dren? Since when can’t we tell them how to be­have and how to con­duct them­selves? Since when do we al­low our chil­dren to reach our homes af­ter 9 o’clock in the night and there is no­body ac­count­able to? Where have we gone as a so­ci­ety? As a per­son? You couldn’t’ do that when you were young, so why are you al­low­ing it now? Hazel asked loud­ly.

Hazel said while the TTPS has projects to guide young peo­ple, it is not the po­lice’s job to raise them.

“You are the par­ents of your chil­dren and your chil­dren’s chil­dren, and you have a re­spon­si­bil­i­ty in or­der to take care of your chil­dren, and for far too long, when the par­ents have failed, the church has failed, the school has failed, so­ci­ety leaves the re­spon­si­bil­i­ty to the po­lice and the ju­di­cia­ry, tonight West End I’m putting it square­ly on the par­ents of these com­mu­ni­ties to en­sure that we re­turn to the bar­gain­ing ta­ble,” Hazel said to light ap­plause.

The ACP re­mind­ed those in at­ten­dance that they brought their chil­dren in­to the world, and they can’t shy away from their re­spon­si­bil­i­ty.

He added: “We have 97 po­lice run youth clubs through­out Trinidad and To­ba­go. In those 97 we have to find 97 po­lice of­fi­cers from our pool to work with these young peo­ple in or­der to shape these young peo­ple so that they can be a cat­a­lyst for change. How­ev­er, we don’t do it alone, we do it with teach­ers and lead­ers from the com­mu­ni­ty who work to­geth­er in or­der to deal with cer­tain so­cial is­sues in or­der to pre­vent so­cial de­cay.” He told those in at­ten­dance that re­cent­ly the TTPS has re­alised that things op­er­ate in a “con­cen­tric cir­cle.”

“So, in the fail­ure of so­ci­ety in its par­ent­ing, the schools and some of its out­reach pro­grammes, chil­dren are placed be­fore the courts, po­lice of­fi­cers will lay charges and put them be­fore the courts.

“The ju­di­cia­ry put it right square­ly back now in the hands of the po­lice, who, in re­cent times, are send­ing back to po­lice youth clubs to su­per­vise chil­dren by way of pro­vid­ing them with an op­por­tu­ni­ty where they can do com­mu­ni­ty ser­vice or­ders, so here it is,” ACP Hazel said mak­ing a cir­cu­lar mo­tion with his fin­ger, “360 round the cir­cle, so the po­lice take them off the streets for bad be­hav­iour, they are through the court sys­tem and the court sends them straight back to the po­lice youth club and tell us to re­ha­bil­i­tate them.”

The As­sis­tant Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er said it is im­por­tant for par­ents to un­der­stand the dilem­ma they work with in so­ci­ety.

“Hence the rea­son we are ask­ing for equal part­ner­ship.”

How­ev­er, he sought to un­der­score that while he is call­ing for more dis­ci­pline, he is not en­cour­ag­ing abuse.

“We can be firm but not harsh, we can love with­out in­flict­ing pun­ish­ment, but clear­ly there has to be a re­spon­si­bil­i­ty and role that par­ents need to play in as­sur­ing our youth don’t join gangs but join groups,” he said.

The town hall meet­ing style fo­rum is a man­date from Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Er­la Hare­wood Christo­pher, who asked that each di­vi­sion meet with the pub­lic at least once per month.


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