One year after the School-Oriented Policing Unit was established, the Trinidad and Tobago Police Service is expanding its strategic measures to tackle gang violence, gang culture, bullying, and substance abuse within 17 priority schools through the Flip the Script Campaign.
The Flip the Script initiative builds on a TTPS campaign established in 2012 called ‘Be a Buddy, not a Bully’.
According to Superintendent David Guelmo, attached to the Community-Oriented Policing Unit, the multi-platform school safety and youth engagement initiative will utilise police youth clubs and music programmes to provide psychosocial support and mentorship to students.
Speaking at the launch on Wednesday, Police Commissioner Allister Guevarro celebrated this collaborative partnership.
“I heard all the comments and scrutiny in the public as to what the police going in the school to do. And it was heartening to hear the National Parent Teachers Association flip their script from being observing what was happening, to now being supportive of what was happening, and I saw an ad come out, and I was pleased, and I said, yes, indeed, we are beginning to make a difference.”
Social media personality, educator, and partner of the Flip the Script initiative, Stephon Felmine, hailed the objective of the programme.
“It’s message is simple: the story does not have to end the way it began. A student who made a poor decision can make a better one, a child known for fighting can become a leader, and a victim of bullying can find support. We are teaching that choices have consequences, but behaviour can change, and every young person can write a better next chapter.”
Social worker and parent Arlene Smith recounted her child’s experience as a victim of bullying, which led her to volunteer her services to aid in its prevention.
“What I discover is that even the perpetrator is also a victim, and then I had to go a deeper level, and I realised the importance of parenting and being actively involved in parenting and co-parenting, because unless we also address the root cause, the underlying issues, it is not just a surface, and then we needed to understand that people have different issues, so someone with an acute trauma will experience life differently from someone who has chronic traumas.”
While its intervention begins in schools, the initiative is also intended to have an impact on communities if successfully implemented.