T&T Uni­fied Teach­ers’ As­so­ci­a­tion (TTUTA) pres­i­dent Mar­tin Lum Kin ex­pressed the con­cern felt by par­ents, teach­ers and stu­dents all across this coun­try, when he said crime is “com­ing too close and too of­ten in schools, es­pe­cial­ly in the Bel­mont area.”

His com­ment, af­ter the vic­tim of a shoot­ing ran bleed­ing and shirt­less through the com­pound of Prov­i­dence Girls’ Catholic School in Bel­mont, draws at­ten­tion to a dis­turb­ing trend. As crime spi­rals fur­ther out of con­trol na­tion­wide, not even schools are safe.

In just the past few weeks there have been in­ci­dents in­volv­ing gun­play in dan­ger­ous prox­im­i­ty to schools and in every case, the stu­dents have been wit­ness­es to those events.

The in­ci­dent at Prov­i­dence on Thurs­day oc­curred just at the start of the school day.

A Bel­mont res­i­dent was shot by a gun­man near the Hilton Trinidad on the La­dy Young Road. To es­cape his as­sailant, the man ran through a track which runs at the back of the school be­tween the La­dy Young and Bel­mont Cir­cu­lar Roads and jumped over the school’s fence.

His pres­ence in the school­yard caused chaos as stu­dents and staff screamed and ran for cov­er.

Just days ear­li­er and a few me­tres away from Prov­i­dence Girls’, gun­men en­tered Bel­mont Sec­ondary School through a hole in a fence and ac­cost­ed a safe­ty of­fi­cer who stum­bled up­on them.

Stu­dents there saw the safe­ty of­fi­cer be­ing tak­en to the back of the school at gun­point. Things might have been much worse had it not been for po­lice of­fi­cers on pa­trol near­by, as the gun­men fled on hear­ing a siren.

And it was just a few weeks ear­li­er that five men in two SU­Vs drove through a dirt track be­hind the Munroe Road Hin­du Pri­ma­ry School and shot and killed farmer Ron­nie Pierre. Again, this vi­o­lent crime was wit­nessed by the chil­dren in the near­by school.

While no stu­dents suf­fered phys­i­cal harm in these three in­ci­dents, they were not spared the trau­ma of be­ing so per­ilous­ly close to heinous crimes.

The lin­ger­ing ef­fects of such har­row­ing or­deals were summed up best by a Form One Prov­i­dence Girls’ stu­dent, who ex­pressed what every stu­dent ex­posed to those in­ci­dents must still be feel­ing: “We do not feel safe go­ing back to the school.”

The ear­ly dis­missal of class­es on each oc­ca­sion pro­vid­ed on­ly tem­po­rary re­prieve—if any at all—from those fright­en­ing in­ci­dents. With­in a short time, they had to re­turn to class­es at lo­ca­tions that were, in a very re­al sense, crime scenes.

There were in­ter­ven­tions by Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion Stu­dent Sup­port Ser­vices Di­vi­sion per­son­nel in each in­stance to deal with the psy­cho­log­i­cal trau­ma, but these re­cent oc­cur­rences de­mand more se­ri­ous in­ter­ven­tions.

There is al­ready some lev­el of co-op­er­a­tion be­tween the Min­istries of Ed­u­ca­tion and Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty to ad­dress vi­o­lence in schools. How­ev­er, these ef­forts are pri­mar­i­ly fo­cused on stu­dent-on-stu­dent in­ci­dents.

Crim­i­nal ac­tiv­i­ty en­croach­ing on places of learn­ing, pos­ing se­ri­ous threats to stu­dents, takes the mat­ter to a much high­er di­men­sion, re­quir­ing a stronger re­sponse.

Po­lice pa­trols near the af­fect­ed schools treat on­ly the symp­toms and are nowhere near tack­ling the cause of this prob­lem.

War­ring gangs and mur­der­ous crim­i­nals are brazen­ly break­ing the law, show­ing no care or re­gard even for vul­ner­a­ble chil­dren. They must be stopped be­fore things get much worse.