Eliz­a­beth Gon­za­les

Se­nior Re­porter

eliz­a­beth.gon­za­les@guardian.co.tt

Po­lice will use da­ta gath­ered dur­ing the last aca­d­e­m­ic year to tar­get fight­ing, va­p­ing and mar­i­jua­na pos­ses­sion in schools this term, with 51 schools re­main­ing on the School-Ori­ent­ed Polic­ing (SOP) pro­gramme for now.

Speak­ing with Guardian Me­dia yes­ter­day, Deputy Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice Ju­nior Ben­jamin said the Trinidad and To­ba­go Po­lice Ser­vice (TTPS) is adopt­ing a more proac­tive ap­proach as schools re­open to­day, af­ter sta­tis­tics showed in­creas­es in all three ar­eas dur­ing the 2025/2026 aca­d­e­m­ic year.

“What we plan on do­ing this year is to re­al­ly see how we can im­prove the lev­el of ser­vice that we want to give to the schools by, first of all, seek­ing to have a more proac­tive re­sponse,” Ben­jamin said.

“Now that we have stats from last year, we’re able to look at the ar­eas where we recog­nise most of the of­fences that are tak­ing place. This in­cludes, one, we saw an in­crease in fight­ing. We al­so saw an in­crease in va­p­ing. And al­so, we saw an in­crease in pos­ses­sion of mar­i­jua­na.”

Ben­jamin said po­lice will con­cen­trate re­sources on schools where those is­sues have been most preva­lent. Com­mu­ni­ty polic­ing of­fi­cers will al­so en­gage at-risk stu­dents as part of an ef­fort to im­prove be­hav­iour and re­duce of­fend­ing.

“The idea is to re­al­ly try to en­sure that, one, we cre­ate a safer en­vi­ron­ment for learn­ing across the school en­vi­ron­ment. That’s one. Two, the next thing is to see if we can re­duce the num­ber of of­fences that are tak­ing place with­in the schools, more par­tic­u­lar­ly those that we have the po­lice of­fi­cers in,” he said.

He added that of­fi­cers are be­ing en­cour­aged to work more close­ly with teach­ers, prin­ci­pals, par­ents and stu­dents. Po­lice al­so want of­fi­cers to build men­tor­ship re­la­tion­ships with stu­dents and be seen as sources of sup­port, rather than sole­ly as en­forcers of the law.

The pro­gramme will con­tin­ue in the same 51 schools for the time be­ing, al­though Ben­jamin said the list could be re­vised fol­low­ing dis­cus­sions with the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion.

He ex­plained that the min­istry makes the fi­nal de­ci­sion on school se­lec­tion, us­ing both its own re­ports and in­for­ma­tion pro­vid­ed by the TTPS. Some schools may even­tu­al­ly be re­moved if in­ci­dents de­cline, while oth­ers could be added.

“For now, we’re go­ing with the same schools thus far, un­til fur­ther no­tice,” he said.

Ben­jamin al­so con­firmed that man­pow­er as­signed to the ini­tia­tive has not changed, al­though he said he did not have the ex­act num­ber of of­fi­cers avail­able.

The SOP pro­gramme was in­tro­duced in Sep­tem­ber 2025 as part of the Gov­ern­ment’s re­sponse to es­ca­lat­ing school vi­o­lence.

In March, Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Roger Alexan­der told the Sen­ate that the ini­tia­tive was de­signed to strength­en school safe­ty, pre­vent and man­age vi­o­lence, and pro­vide a vis­i­ble po­lice pres­ence where need­ed.

At the start of the 2025/2026 school year, spe­cial­ly trained of­fi­cers were as­signed to 50 sec­ondary schools, while po­lice al­so pro­vid­ed pa­trol sup­port to an ad­di­tion­al 10 sec­ondary and 10 pri­ma­ry schools.

By March, Ed­u­ca­tion Min­is­ter Dr Michael Dowlath told Par­lia­ment that schools were se­lect­ed based on sus­pen­sion da­ta, pat­terns of vi­o­lent in­ci­dents, the vul­ner­a­bil­i­ty of sur­round­ing com­mu­ni­ties and oth­er risk fac­tors.

Dowlath said 51 schools had been iden­ti­fied us­ing those cri­te­ria, while 20 schools were as­signed rov­ing po­lice pa­trols.

The ini­tia­tive has faced scruti­ny over the role of po­lice of­fi­cers in schools, the cri­te­ria used to se­lect schools and whether suf­fi­cient at­ten­tion is be­ing paid to the un­der­ly­ing caus­es of vi­o­lence and in­dis­ci­pline.

Those is­sues were raised in Par­lia­ment in March when St Ann’s East MP and for­mer ed­u­ca­tion min­is­ter Dr Nyan Gads­by-Dol­ly tabled a pri­vate mo­tion seek­ing more in­for­ma­tion on of­fi­cers’ train­ing, re­spon­si­bil­i­ties, de­ploy­ment and the pro­gramme’s per­for­mance mea­sures.

De­fend­ing the ini­tia­tive, Dowlath said 257 of­fi­cers had re­ceived mul­ti­dis­ci­pli­nary train­ing and 95 were se­lect­ed for school de­ploy­ments. Their re­spon­si­bil­i­ties in­clude main­tain­ing safe­ty, re­spond­ing to emer­gen­cies, me­di­at­ing con­flicts, pro­mot­ing pos­i­tive be­hav­iour, sup­port­ing vul­ner­a­ble stu­dents and en­forc­ing the law when nec­es­sary.

Ac­cord­ing to Ed­u­ca­tion Min­istry da­ta cit­ed by Dowlath, ap­prox­i­mate­ly 22,000 sus­pen­sions were record­ed across the school sys­tem be­tween 2022 and 2025. The fig­ures in­clud­ed 3,700 fights, 458 as­saults in­volv­ing weapons, 879 cas­es of sex­u­al mis­con­duct, 1,100 drug-re­lat­ed in­ci­dents and 504 cas­es in­volv­ing weapon pos­ses­sion.

Dowlath lat­er re­port­ed that sus­pen­sions in schools with as­signed school-ori­ent­ed po­lice of­fi­cers de­clined from 1,711 to 1,555 in Term Two, while vi­o­lence-re­lat­ed sus­pen­sions fell from 560 to 455.

Ben­jamin said the TTPS now in­tends to use lessons learned dur­ing the pro­gramme’s first year to guide de­ploy­ments and in­ter­ven­tions.

“We are hop­ing to, again, use that in­tel­li­gence-led ap­proach where we’re go­ing to be look­ing at the schools where we’re see­ing most of the of­fences tak­ing place,” he said.