ANYONE who has not visited the Half-Way-Tree Transport Centre in its five-year existence has not tasted the real world.

The picturesque, well laid-out facility looks inviting to passersby who have the luxury of driving their own motor vehicles. But what exists on the inside can blow the mind when the kinds of activities that children are involved in emerges.

This writer’s first visit occurred on Monday afternoon of October 7. The buzz of activities led by an army of schoolchildren drawn from platoons (also known as schools) across the Corporate Area was an immediate turn-off.

Some of their no-holds-barred activities appeared frightening at first. But that was only the beginning — worse was to come, the manager of the facility informed the Jamaica Observer news team.

“You haven’t seen anything yet. You need to come here on a Friday afternoon and see how our children behave,” bus park manager Lynval Thompson stated.

“On a Friday afternoon, thousands of students meet in groups, gallivant from 1:30 to about 5:00, and then that’s the time they want to travel, depriving the JUTC (Jamaica Urban Transit Company) of revenue, because they are now competing with the adults,” Thompson said.

But depriving the State-run bus company of revenue is one thing. The conduct of the children is quite another.

Open sexual gestures, like suggestive hugging, contact with female breasts, and kissing, are commonplace.

Other irregular behaviour like jumping into the path of oncoming buses, forcing them to halt abruptly, boisterous conduct and failure to adhere to bus park regulations occur at will.

The police post, manned by a team of special constables, is often outnumbered, if not ill-equipped to deal with the flood of the young masses.

“They break every rule, every law,” Thompson said. The girls from Ardenne, Queen’s and Meadowbrook, in particular, are among the worst.

“The boys’ schools, too, are problems and we have to be in constant contact with their school representatives. I must say that of all the schools, Calabar’s dean of discipline, Mr Fagan, responds most positively when we ask them to come down and address the problems,” Thompson said.

The JUTC spends $8 million a month to rent the premises from the Port Authority of Jamaica, which owns the property.

It is a losing effort, as the money collected, already shortened by adults turning away because of the children’s behaviour, often makes the sales target difficult to achieve.

“I avoid coming into the centre when the children are here,” said commuter Dennis Webley.

“At peak hour there are fights, uproar, mob-like behaviour and it’s scary. There are thousands here and they have no regard for adults,” Webley said.

The massive invasion of children on that Monday would only be a drop in the bucket when Friday came along, all those familiar with activities in the park predicted.

“It is chaos here on a Friday. We seize knives, scissors, iron pipes, ice picks, T-squares and things like that,” Special Sergeant April McFarlane told the Sunday Observer.

“On a Friday, up to 20 children are detained. Students from all over the island come here on Fridays to meet their friends and lovers, who they make contact with on Facebook and Twitter,” she said.

Police also confirmed that students have been caught having sex in the facility’s washrooms.

“The children a run this place to a wreck,” said Special Corporal McLean.

So bad is the problem that even business enterprises which operate from the facility have become cagey.

Lifestyle Pharmacy on the ground level has suffered from shoplifting. Its principals have been forced to place a sign on the outside which reads: “Only two students allowed at any one time.”

“They are disrespectful and they don’t hear,” one employee said.

As predicted, the follow-up visit last Friday revealed even more startling information.

From bright and early in the morning, police had to hold onto a St Mary High School student, who had gone to the centre to await an adult male from St Thomas, whom she admitted to police who interrogated her that she had never met in person.

The long wait on the mystery man forced police antennae upward and after the school and the child’s parents were contacted, she was sent on her way to the institution’s base at Highgate in St Mary for further action.

Like the police predicted, there was more drama — among them a bit of blood spilt, and a ‘coco’ resulting from the use of a T-square on a forehead for what the inventor of the device had no intention when it was being conceptualised.

Skirmishes downstairs, and upstairs too, forced an interesting comment from an adult: “We really need to call out the army now, man. Dem ya pickney ya gone from bad to worse. How long we a go tek dis kind a behaviour?”

The police post hardly had free room for movement when the Sunday Observer visited.

“You come here on a good day,” one policeman said.

“You want come here on busy Friday or ‘Champs’ time,” he said, referring to the spill-off effects of the Boys’ and Girls’ Athletics Championships usually held at the National Stadium between March and April each year.

In the meantime, Coaster bus operators were having a field day on the outside, profiting from the stick-up of the JUTC and its rented facility by students.

“If this is how our leaders of the future behave now, then what will happen to Jamaica in a few years’ time?” one adult’s profound question rang out.