Griffith: Undercover cops coming to schools

Police Commissioner Gary Griffith

Police Commissioner Gary Griffith plans to have undercover police operating in TT schools to help tackle violence among students. He announced those plans and others at the first stop on his meet-the-constituency tour in Oropouche East yesterday.

Griffith will visit the other 40 constituencies to assess levels of crime and recommendations by constituents. The area’s MP, Dr Roodal Moonilal, hosted him yesterday at the Debe constituency office.

Griffith said the undercover officers were part of a plan to reinstate a School Services Unit within the police to tackle violence in schools. It will not be only response based, he said, but involves covert operations by police who will actually work undercover at schools.

“So the janitor working in the school might be a police officer. It will be a covert operation, if you all have ever seen 21 Jump Street.”

Griffith also said there would soon to be a Domestic Violence Unit in which high-tech equipment would enable the police to actually see the location from where a distress call was being made.

Residents voiced concerns about the police attitude to them, the lack of response to domestic violence reports and school security.

Griffith said the template had already arrived in the country for the creation of an online system geared towards people filing reports of domestic violence, which could range from abusive husband-and-wife relationships to people seeing children being physically abused.