Four Westmoreland schools get SROs to combat violence
Published:Friday | September 13, 2024 | 12:09 AMAlbert Ferguson/Gleaner Writer
WESTERN BUREAU:
Superintendent Othneil Dobson, the police commander for Westmoreland, says his division has assigned school resource officers (SROs) to four of the eight secondary schools in the parish.
In giving his monthly report at Thursday’s sitting of the Westmoreland Municipal Corporation (WMC), Dobson said Little London High School, Grange Hill High School, Godfrey Stewart High School and Petersfield High School have all been given improved and increased police presence.
“With instruction from the commissioner of police (Dr Kevin Blake), we have increased the number of school resource officers within the schools in the division,” said Dobson. “Four schools now have permanent school resource officers and we are working assiduously to ensure that we stabilise any problems that come up within those schools or within the communities.”
SROs are police officers placed in an education facility to help maintain discipline. They are empowered to prosecute any student who commits an unlawful act on the school compound. They are also tasked to identify troubled and disruptive students and bring them to the attention of the school’s administrator.
Dobson said that the other four secondary institutions without SROs will be monitored by the police to ensure that they are safe spaces for teaching and learning.
Dobson urged parents and teachers to collaborate in addressing the steady increase in bullying in the nation’s schools.
“We are saying to our teachers and our parents, let us try and work on that bullying issue that continues in our schools. If it is allowed to start there, it will turn into gangs and other activities,” he said.
During the last school year, there was a series of violence incidents in schools across the island, which saw students being killed by their peers and external criminal elements.
In an incident in Westmoreland in April, Carson Barrett, a 16 year-old student at Grange Hill High School, was shot and killed by gunmen travelling on a motorcycle just outside the school gate.