Security stepped up at San Juan North after teacher robbery

The Trinidad and To­ba­go Po­lice Ser­vice (TTPS), Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion, Min­istry of Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty and oth­er stake­hold­ers are co­or­di­nat­ing a re­sponse to se­cu­ri­ty con­cerns at San Juan North Sec­ondary School fol­low­ing the rob­bery of a teacher on the school com­pound.

The re­sponse is fo­cused on sup­port­ing the af­fect­ed teacher and her fam­i­ly while ad­dress­ing se­cu­ri­ty vul­ner­a­bil­i­ties at the school.

Ed­u­ca­tion Min­is­ter Michael Dowlat par­tic­i­pat­ed in a meet­ing and site vis­it at the school on Sun­day, where of­fi­cials ex­am­ined the com­pound and iden­ti­fied ar­eas re­quir­ing se­cu­ri­ty im­prove­ments.

Mea­sures dis­cussed in­clud­ed im­proved light­ing around the com­pound, re­pairs to perime­ter fenc­ing, the in­stal­la­tion of CCTV cam­eras and the clear­ing of thick un­der­growth to im­prove vis­i­bil­i­ty.

The meet­ing was at­tend­ed by Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion of­fi­cials, school ad­min­is­tra­tors and rep­re­sen­ta­tives from the MTS Safe­ty Unit.

The co­or­di­nat­ed re­sponse con­tin­ued on Mon­day with a stake­hold­ers’ plan­ning meet­ing at­tend­ed by Head of the TTPS So­cial Sup­port Ser­vices Kirk Pierre and Se­nior Su­per­in­ten­dent of the North East­ern Di­vi­sion Claire Guy-Al­leyne.

Rep­re­sen­ta­tives from the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion, Min­istry of Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty and the Pol­i­cy and Com­mu­ni­ty Sup­port Of­fice al­so par­tic­i­pat­ed.

The TTPS Vic­tim and Wit­ness Sup­port Unit (VW­SU) al­so con­tact­ed the af­fect­ed teacher on Mon­day, and she ac­cept­ed the Unit’s ser­vices.

A sup­port ses­sion has been sched­uled for the teacher and her fam­i­ly on Wednes­day.

The TTPS said the mul­ti-agency re­sponse is aimed at ad­dress­ing the im­me­di­ate im­pact of the in­ci­dent while strength­en­ing the phys­i­cal se­cu­ri­ty of the school com­pound.