An­na-Lisa Paul

Se­nior Re­porter

an­na-lisa.paul@guardian.co.tt

Par­ents of stu­dents be­ing bul­lied at school are ad­vised to file a re­port at any po­lice sta­tion, and it will be in­ves­ti­gat­ed.

Is­su­ing this ad­vice on Fri­day dur­ing a me­dia brief­ing at the Po­lice Ad­min­is­tra­tion Build­ing, Port-of-Spain, As­sis­tant Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice (ACP), Crim­i­nal, Curt Si­mon en­cour­aged peo­ple to lodge their com­plaints and let the au­thor­i­ties de­cide on the lev­el of se­ri­ous­ness.

He said some peo­ple may be ap­pre­hen­sive about mak­ing a re­port, as “they may think it is not a se­ri­ous mat­ter.”

Ad­dress­ing the is­sue of bul­ly­ing, which he said has been around “time im­memo­r­i­al,” and in light of the death of Jay­den Lalchan, who died by sui­cide af­ter he was bul­lied for years at his school, Si­mon urged the pub­lic to “let the TTPS be the de­cider of how se­ri­ous the is­sue is and bring the mat­ter to us.”

He added, “We are aware some chil­dren may not even make the re­ports to their par­ents and even their teach­ers, but teach­ers do tend to ob­serve things, and whilst they may make the state­ment that bul­ly­ing out­side of the school com­pound may not be in their in­ter­est to re­act to, we want to en­cour­age them to make the re­ports to us via the in­for­ma­tion route so we would be bet­ter aware of what is hap­pen­ing and have our pro­grammes and poli­cies bet­ter de­signed to deal with the is­sues.”