Friends won’t bring you back

Responding to footage of two Tobago schoolboys playing with a pistol, Police Commissioner Gary Griffith confirmed the matter was being investigated and said parents ought to use the video as a wake-up call to play a more active role in their children’s lives.

Speaking at yesterday’s weekly media briefing at Sackville Street, Port of Spain, Griffith said the video had been brought to his attention.

He said it was necessary for parents to know who their children’s friends were and make the effort to avoid them from mixing with peers who could influence them into illegal activities.

Quoting his grandmother, he said friends would “carry you away but won’t bring you back.”

He added, “The two children have already been questioned. But I want to advise parents, you need to be very careful of the adults your children associate themselves with. It was a saying with my grandmother: people will take you places and don’t bring you back. So we need to be very careful.

“It goes back to the situation last year where a 14-year-old boy was playing cards at 3 am with three individuals who had weapons and fired at police.

“We need to be careful. So I am asking parents, please, spend time with your children because they can become gang members, and from gang members they can become shooters, and from that they can either end up in jail or in a box.”