Minister Ameen condemns assault on Port of Spain alderman Wayne Griffith

Min­is­ter of Rur­al De­vel­op­ment and Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment Khadi­jah Ameen has con­demned the as­sault of Port of Spain City Cor­po­ra­tion Al­der­man Wayne Grif­fith fol­low­ing the cir­cu­la­tion of a vi­ral video on so­cial me­dia.

Grif­fith was at­tacked by sev­er­al stu­dents of Tran­quil­li­ty Gov­ern­ment Sec­ondary School on Mon­day af­ter­noon in Port of Spain.

In the video, Grif­fith is seen at­tempt­ing to in­ter­vene in a fight in­volv­ing stu­dents when a group turned on him, knock­ing him to the ground and as­sault­ing him.

In a me­dia re­lease, Ameen said she be­came aware of the in­ci­dent and im­me­di­ate­ly at­tempt­ed to con­tact Grif­fith di­rect­ly but reached his voice­mail. She said she lat­er sent him a What­sApp mes­sage out of con­cern.

The min­is­ter al­so con­tact­ed Min­is­ter of Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty Roger Alexan­der to ex­press con­cern about the mat­ter. Ac­cord­ing to the re­lease, Alexan­der ad­vised that the Trinidad and To­ba­go Po­lice Ser­vice is ac­tive­ly ad­dress­ing the in­ci­dent.

Ameen said she hopes the po­lice in­ves­ti­ga­tion will iden­ti­fy those re­spon­si­ble and that ap­pro­pri­ate ac­tion will fol­low.

She al­so re­it­er­at­ed sup­port for con­tin­ued pre­ven­ta­tive mea­sures to ad­dress school vi­o­lence and an­ti so­cial be­hav­iour among young peo­ple.

The min­is­ter point­ed to on­go­ing ini­tia­tives in­volv­ing po­lice of­fi­cers in schools, in­clud­ing Tran­quil­li­ty Gov­ern­ment Sec­ondary School, and said these ef­forts have al­ready con­tributed to a re­duc­tion in in­ci­dents of school vi­o­lence across the coun­try.

While de­clin­ing to spec­u­late on the cir­cum­stances sur­round­ing the in­ci­dent pend­ing the out­come of the po­lice in­ves­ti­ga­tion, Ameen reaf­firmed sup­port for ef­forts aimed at pro­mot­ing safe­ty, re­spect and ci­vil­i­ty in com­mu­ni­ties and schools across Trinidad and To­ba­go.