PHILIPSBURG:-- A special team consisted of officers from the Zero Tolerance team and Voluntary Korps are now controlling school areas in the vicinity of all secondary schools. The police department has launched the new team to help combat the increasing amount of fights taking place around the island’s schools. The team is presently concentrating around areas of South Reward, St Peters and Cul-de-Sac, announced police spokesman Ricardo Henson. The officers will be seen in the area just before the end of school each day. These measures are temporary which have started about a week ago and requires the input and cooperation of the entire community to do their part, until effective and definite solutions to these problems are found and put in place.
These measures are also to prevent and suppress this type of negative behavior, to ensure the safety, and to protect the other students attending those schools and the persons living in those neighborhoods. The Zero-tolerance team will be removing any one who is loitering in the neighborhood of any of these schools or who does not have any valid explanation or reason for being in the vicinity of these schools.
The police department is asking the cooperation of all parents who have to drop-off or pick-up their child or children at any of these schools to do so on time. This measure is to avoid having the children hanging around the school areas unnecessarily.
Parents are urged to instruct their children not to venture to any of the other schools to catch the bus or for any unnecessary reasons. They should catch the bus at their respective schools. Most of all they should instruct their children to refrain from getting involved in any physical confrontations or any other type of negative behavior. The O-tolerance team will be carrying out the O-tolerance policy and any of the students involved in a fight will be taken to the police station and their parents will be notified. At the end of the school hours, several units of the O-tolerance team will make sure that the students that are boarding the buses will do that orderly and safely and in doing so clearing the school area as quickly as possible. The measure will also minimize the possibility of any fights taking place. This is a community problem and police department will do their part and expects the cooperation from the entire community to give a helping hand in solving this problem.