A “brutal” school assault has triggered Prime Minister Kamla Persad-Bissessar to announce a zero-tolerance policy on school violence after an assault on a Form 5 student earlier this week.
Speaking to reporters on Thursday evening, she revealed that students who engage in violent acts could now face both expulsion and criminal prosecution.
It’s scenes like this that Trinidad and Tobago have grown accustomed to school fights happening in and out of the classroom and on the streets.
But after the latest incident earlier this week, which led to a student being hospitalised, Prime Minister Kamla Persad-Bissessar said enough is enough.
She deemed the attack a “planned and filmed” assault and said not only students, but parents are being warned that these incidents will be treated as incidents of “assault or battery”. As such, they will be considered as expellable and arrestable offences.
“If your child batters another child in assaults or batters another child in school, they will be expelled and will face the full brunt of the law. They will be arrested. Let us carefully listen. I’m not saying that they will be suspended, but it will become an expellable offence.”
The most recent incident reportedly took place on Tuesday, inside the bathroom at a school in Port of Spain, where the teenager suffered a fractured nose, a broken tooth, blood clots in the eyes, and other injuries to her body during the brutal beating.
The Prime Minister said the video showed three girls cornering and ambushing the victim in a “premeditated attack”.
“Several other female students were seen recording the incident, and instead of stepping in to help, they were busy filming. As the beating concluded, one of the attackers delivered two forceful kicks to the victim’s face, leaving her bleeding from the nose. Clumps of her hair were seen scattered on the floor as she lay injured on the ground.”
The Prime Minister also warned that school uniforms will no longer protect students from the law.
“If someone is 15 years old, if that person robs you or assaults you or extorts you, they are arrested. However, if they do the same thing in a school uniform, they are getting a free pass. It doesn’t make sense that a school uniform is a licence to break the law. This must stop. All acts of school violence must now be referred to the police for criminal prosecutions.”
To prevent violent students from slipping through the cracks or into gangs, Minister of Defence Wayne Sturge said the government is considering mandatory attendance for these students in the Military-Led Academic Training Programme (MILAT).
“We appreciate that you should be punished or removed for the safety of other children so that you don’t continue to bully others. We also have to take into account that if we simply remove you and you are not attending school, you may end up in a gang, and we are seeking to try to mitigate against that, so that we will take that into account to try to protect you from yourself.”
And the Prime Minister is urging school officials to report all such incidents to law enforcement.
“Additionally, all students caught in videos cheering and clapping and egging on the violence will be suspended because they are also participants. It is time that every act of school violence be reported to the police, and that participants, as I say, face expulsion and prosecution in the courts. I am urging all principals, teachers and students to make reports to the police and file the reports to your MPs if you see no action being taken.”
The three students involved in the June 3rd attack are now facing suspension, but under the new policy, future offenders may find themselves not just out of school but in the hands of police and the courts.