19 students arrested, charged for violence at school in first term

Gail Alexan­der

Se­nior Po­lit­i­cal Re­porter

Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Roger Alexan­der says since the School Ori­ent­ed Polic­ing Ini­tia­tive be­gan in Sep­tem­ber 2025, 19 stu­dents were ar­rest­ed in the first term from Sep­tem­ber to De­cem­ber 2025. The 19 were all charged in con­nec­tion with school vi­o­lence.

He gave the sta­tis­tics in the Sen­ate yes­ter­day, re­spond­ing to ques­tions from the Op­po­si­tion bench. Alexan­der al­so said six chil­dren were re­port­ed sep­a­rat­ed, miss­ing or lost dur­ing the Car­ni­val 2026 cel­e­bra­tions, and all six were lo­cat­ed by the TTPS and safe­ly re­unit­ed with par­ents or guardians with­in an hour.

He said the TTPS’ pol­i­cy gov­ern­ing chil­dren sep­a­rat­ed from par­ents or guardians was last re­viewed for the 2026 Car­ni­val cel­e­bra­tions.

Alexan­der said the TTPS main­tains sta­tis­ti­cal records of in­ci­dents in­volv­ing chil­dren sep­a­rat­ed from par­ents at pub­lic events and, on de­mo­graph­ic trends, “Pri­mar­i­ly, in­ter­nal analy­sis in­di­cates that such in­ci­dents oc­cur more fre­quent­ly dur­ing high-den­si­ty crowd events, dur­ing peak fes­tive hours, and among young chil­dren, par­tic­u­lar­ly those un­der the age of 12,” he added.

On pol­i­cy re­forms and pro­gramme en­hance­ments, Alexan­der said the TTPS is ex­pand­ing pub­lic aware­ness and pre-event safe­ty cam­paigns and es­tab­lish­ing clear, des­ig­nat­ed and high­ly vis­i­ble “Chil­dren’s Uni­fi­ca­tion Points” at ma­jor event venues.

He al­so cit­ed the in­tro­duc­tion and pro­mo­tion of wrist­bands and iden­ti­fi­ca­tion sys­tems for mi­nors, and the ex­pand­ed use of pub­lic ad­dress sys­tems.

Re­gard­ing sta­tis­tics from the pre­vi­ous State of Emer­gency, which ran from Ju­ly 18, 2025, to Jan­u­ary 31, 2026, Alexan­der said a to­tal of 153 peo­ple were ar­rest­ed, and a to­tal of 29 peo­ple were charged for var­i­ous of­fences.

The coun­try is cur­rent­ly un­der an­oth­er SoE, which be­gan on March 3 and was ex­tend­ed for three months.

Giv­ing fur­ther in­for­ma­tion re­gard­ing the 2025/2026 SoE, Alexan­der said a to­tal of 208 Pre­ven­tive De­ten­tion Or­ders (PDOs) were is­sued dur­ing that pe­ri­od. One was is­sued in du­pli­cate, he said.

“A to­tal of 20 per­sons re­mains (sic) in cus­tody at the East­ern Cor­rec­tion­al Re­ha­bil­i­ta­tion Cen­tre on re­mand war­rants. The re­main­der was (sic) re­leased from var­i­ous de­ten­tion cen­tres. A to­tal of 29 per­sons who were de­tained un­der Pre­ven­tive De­ten­tion Or­ders has (sic) been for­mal­ly charged for var­i­ous of­fences. These mat­ters are still pend­ing,” Alexan­der added.

On an­oth­er Op­po­si­tion query, Gov­ern­ment Sen­ate leader Dar­rell Al­la­har said the Po­lice Com­plaints Au­thor­i­ty (PCA) does not have a pol­i­cy gov­ern­ing the use of pri­vate­ly owned CCTV footage.

How­ev­er, the PCA rou­tine­ly seeks and re­views all rel­e­vant ev­i­dence in mat­ters un­der probe, in­clud­ing pri­vate­ly owned CCTV footage where such ma­te­r­i­al is avail­able and con­sid­ered per­ti­nent. In those cir­cum­stances, the PCA for­mal­ly re­quests the co-op­er­a­tion of prop­er­ty own­ers or cus­to­di­ans and seeks their con­sent to ob­tain the ma­te­r­i­al.

He said the PCA re­lies on the vol­un­tary co-op­er­a­tion of cit­i­zens and prop­er­ty own­ers.