JENSEN LA VENDE

Se­nior Re­porter

jensen.lavende@guardian.co.tt

School fights are in­creas­ing­ly tak­ing place af­ter school hours, rather than on cam­pus, fol­low­ing the de­ploy­ment of po­lice of­fi­cers to schools, Deputy Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice Ju­nior Ben­jamin said.

At the start of the term, the po­lice iden­ti­fied some 80 high-risk schools to sta­tion mem­bers of the School Ori­ent­ed Po­lice Unit (SOPU), and of­fi­cers are now re­port­ing a no­tice­able shift in stu­dent be­hav­iour.

Speak­ing at a Na­tion­al Coun­cil of Par­ent Teacher As­so­ci­a­tion (NPTA) meet­ing at Cas­ca­dia Ho­tel, St Ann’s, yes­ter­day, Ben­jamin said what was ini­tial­ly met with some ap­pre­hen­sion is now show­ing pos­i­tive re­sults.

“When we look at the num­ber of fights, yes, there are still in­ci­dents with­in schools. But what we are see­ing is a shift away from the school com­pound to lo­ca­tions out­side of it — on the roads and else­where.

“There are still a few fights in school, but over­all, there has been a sig­nif­i­cant re­duc­tion. This shows that hav­ing po­lice of­fi­cers in schools is mak­ing a dif­fer­ence,” he said.

Ben­jamin added that while fights have mi­grat­ed off cam­pus, the over­all be­hav­iour of stu­dents has im­proved. He em­pha­sized the im­por­tance of com­mu­ni­ty polic­ing and oth­er de­ter­rents to in­flu­ence be­hav­iour out­side school hours.

He al­so called for greater men­tor­ship be­tween of­fi­cers and stu­dents and urged par­ents to play their role in train­ing their chil­dren.

“We are not here to po­lice these stu­dents en­tire­ly. Par­ents must do their part at home. If chil­dren aren’t trained at home, we can­not do that for them.

“At school, our goal is to pro­vide safe­ty and se­cu­ri­ty and to guide be­hav­iour so that stu­dents con­duct them­selves prop­er­ly even when they leave the cam­pus,” he said.

Ben­jamin ac­knowl­edged that of­fi­cers have had to en­force the law in some cas­es.

“This year, we’ve had at least 12 ar­rests: two for as­sault with a weapon, two for pos­ses­sion of a weapon, four for pos­ses­sion of mar­i­jua­na, two for pos­ses­sion with in­tent to traf­fic, and two for rob­bery. To me, this shows that the Trinidad and To­ba­go Po­lice Ser­vice is tak­ing its re­spon­si­bil­i­ties se­ri­ous­ly,” he said.

He added that he hopes to meet with of­fi­cials from the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion lat­er this week to re­view the full sta­tis­tics and as­sess the over­all im­pact of the SOPU ini­tia­tive.