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Police cramp 'schoolers' style
Mount operation to push students onto buses without lewd music
BY DONNA HUSSEY-WHYTE Observer staff reporter husseyd@jamaicaobserver.com
Monday, October 26, 2009
POLICE in Spanish Town have designed an operation to prevent students from waiting - sometimes until after classes have started in the mornings - on special buses on which loud, lewd music is played, to take them to school.
"We have to be here in the mornings to get them to take the buses to go to school," said Constable Garfield Wallace of the Community Safety and Security Branch at the Spanish Town Police Station. "We here in Spanish Town like to call it Operation Sweep."
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| A police sergeant monitors Jose Marti High students at a bus stop in Spanish Town, last Friday morning. (Photo: Donna Hussey-Whyte) |
Constable Wallace's reference to the practice of many students to ignore minibuses that comply with the rules prohibiting the playing of loud music and overloading (also known as 'lapping up') in preference for heavily tinted minibuses that offer lewd music and on which sexually explicit behaviour is tolerated, was observed during a special two-week investigation of bus routes across Kingston & St Andrew and St Catherine by the Observer.
Throughout the first week of the investigation, scores of Jose Marti High School students were seen gathered at one particular bus stop in the mornings, waiting on what police described as special buses to transport them from Spanish Town to their school at Twickenham Park - five minutes away.
Constable Wallace said that from his observation, the students are the ones at fault.
"It is not the conductors' or drivers' fault, it is the 'schoolers', they are the ones who are refusing to take the regular buses," said Wallace. "Sometimes they are there for hours waiting on special buses to go to school, and empty buses will come but they do not take them."
Wallace, who was seen directing children onto the 'regular' buses one morning, said that exercise has become the norm for him and other police officers.
Corporal Encil Bent, who was also seen monitoring students, said while he understood that a number of students will be at the bus stop, he cannot fathom how some would be there from before 7:00 am and after 8:00 am, when classes would have already started, they were still standing there.
"If you observe some of them you will see them leaning on the fence and talking, they refuse to go down to the bus stop to take the buses," said Corporal Bent.
Ironically, even the marked Jose Marti school bus, which provides a free service, is ignored by most of the students of that school.
When contacted, acting principal of the school Dahlia Donnolly said she was aware of the problem and it was being addressed.
"A number of things are being done," she explained. "Our most recent effort is that we have linked up with JUTC (Jamaica Urban Transit Company - the state-owned bus firm) and they make two to three trips in the mornings taking children here. We also work along with the community safety branch police in Spanish Town, who help to push the children along. The Central Village police assist by patrolling the school's gate because children will come and still congregate there."
The problem, she said, is not isolated to mornings, so similar steps have been taken to get the students home.
"We have a school population of approximately 2,000, so it is very dangerous for all of them to be at the gate in the afternoons trying to get on vehicles," said Donnolly. "What we do is arrange with JUTC to have three of their buses come onto the compound to pick up."
But even this, she explained, is a challenge, as the children have to be forced onto the buses.
"We have to be behind them for them to take advantage of this, but it is not safe for them to be at the corner in that great number," said the acting principal.
She explained, too, that during devotion, talks are given to the students on the dangers of their actions.
"It is a big challenge, but we can't give up," she emphasised. "I don't like to see lingering. And so we have to continue to try."
However, Donnolly said, the situation has improved greatly since last year.
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