Community police to monitor students

Officers from the Community Police will be monitoring secondary schoolchildren before and after school hours to ensure they are not loitering on the streets of Scarborough.

So announced Assistant Commissioner of Police (ACP) Garfield Moore, speaking at a police town meeting last Wednesday at the Calder Hall community centre, one day after a schoolboy was chopped in the head in an altercation on the compound of the Scarborough Library after school hours.

Moore also called on parents to do their part and get their children home after school.

“Tobago police will do their part to assist parents and library officials to prevent loitering before and after school. We are also making the plea for parents to instruct their children to go straight home after school or organise transportation for them. We are also looking at having children escorted to their vehicles to get home because it is our job to protect them,” he said.

Also speaking at the town meeting, Marslyn Melville-Jack, Secretary for Community Development and representative for the Calder Hall area, recommended that community police be stationed in the Scarborough area to monitor schoolchildren before and after school.

“Tobago is a small place where we only have a few schools and we can have some community officers involved in ensuring that students are not liming on the streets. The community police officers duty will be to focus on making sure students are questioned when it's 9am and they are not in school but liming on the streets, you get them to school…if this is done we might have few incidents of delinquency.”

The measures announced by Moore and Melville-Jack followed complaints by residents that students gathering at the back of the library after school has been going on for years now.

Said Arnold Des Vignes, a resident of Calder Hall:

“I’m at the library very often and sometimes I am seeing school children ‘gambling’ long hours after school are over. On many occasions, police vehicles and police in uniform would be walking alongside the library, seeing a lot of children in that vicinity, but these officers could care less.

Another resident, who said she was a tutor with the Tobago Institution of Literacy which operates a programme at the Scarborough Library, said students who are registered do not attend classes but remain outside.

“The students are supposed to come inside to meet me for 4pm but they are outside, leaving me with only one student to assist on Mondays and Fridays.

“We are looking at the parents who are still children and we are looking at children who are growing up to meet these parents who still acting like children. We are still asking for both parents and children to come educate yourselves,” she said.

There are currently 12 students registered in the programme.

The tutor also said she has witnessed some uncivil acts by students who hang at the back of the library.

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