Prosecute pranksters

ALMOST exactly a year to the day since 64 schools across the country received threatening e-mails which traumatised children and parents, students of the Barrackpore East Secondary School were subject to a similar act of terrorism this week.

We condemn in the strongest possible terms these incidents, and join with figures like Martin Lum Kin, the TT Unified Teachers’ Association president, and Dr Roodal Moonilal, the area’s MP, in calling on law enforcement to bring those responsible to justice.

The police need to do a far better job of identifying and prosecuting these kinds of cybercrimes; such attacks on schools are becoming too prevalent.

This week’s incident follows one which occurred mere weeks ago, on March 5, when primary schools in the South Eastern Education District received e-mails about a bomb threat which warned everyone to stay away from schools on March 5 and 6.

Late last year, students of the Naparima Girls’ High School and Naparima College were also subject to a spurious bomb warning and had to be evacuated.

We have heard little in terms of people being held to account in relation to any of these kinds of events.

What makes this week’s matter stand out as particularly distressing, though, is that it seemed designed to play into fears of what occurs all too often in countries like the US, where schools have been subject to shooting rampages, from Columbine in 1999 to the more recent Uvalde, Texas, massacre of 2022.

While gun crime is a huge problem in this country, we have been fortunate not to have a similar history.

However, in recent times there have been dangerous acts of deadly violence in worrisome proximity to school grounds. In these incidents, students have been treated as mere collateral in attacks, gang-related or otherwise.

A man was gunned down outside the Gloster Lodge Moravian Primary School, Belmont, in February. No student was harmed in that incident.

But the same cannot be said for an attack weeks later on a man who was picking up his daughter from school in Laventille. That attack resulted in the death of a 12-year-old boy who was walking home from classes.

Lack of accountability suggests there might be unique impediments to authorities taking action against pranksters.

Some cases may involve juveniles being mischievous; others could have an international element, with last year’s nationwide threat linked to reported hacking of a foreign-based e-mail provider.

But we have enough laws on the books locally, and enough international treaties, to co-ordinate efforts to tackle each case as required and to hold those responsible accountable.

Certainly, elements of these offences involving local actors, local infrastructure or local systems should be properly policed to maximise deterrence.