PLANS ARE in place to introduce 36 additional police personnel, called school resource officers (SROs), to the Safe Schools Programme by June 2007.
Currently, there are 114 trained SROs serving 92 schools islandwide.
According to Superintendent Norman Heywood, coordinator of the police component of the Safe Schools Programme, the increase is to ensure that there are no shortages in the system in cases of administrative leave or illnesses, and to provide for those schools which want to join the
programme.
WAITING LIST
"We have about six to eight schools that are on the waiting list to have persons trained and then sent to their school," Superintendent Heywood said.
Suitable candidates will be recruited through their respective divisions, and the recruitment exercise will be carried out by the community relations branch of the Jamaica Constabulary Force (JCF), which will assume responsibility for monitoring the programme.
"For now, we are just putting in place plans to do the training," Superintendent Heywood said, while noting that the "expansion is dependent upon the availability of personnel within the JCF."
PERSONNEL FROM ALL DIVISIONS
He said he wanted to keep the programme functional and that personnel would consequently be drawn from all divisions including the Mobile Reserve. They would operate on a rotational basis.
Superintendent Heywood said the Mobile Reserve would be essential to the programme because, "If there are schools within their patrol zones, they can develop a good relationship with the staff, which will enable them to drop by and offer solutions to problems."
The Safe Schools Programme was introduced in November 2004 and is a Government initiative to tackle the problem of violence in schools.
- JIS
