ST ELIZABETH, Jamaica – The police in St Elizabeth have vowed to increase their presence in major towns in this south-central parish and ramp up operations in search of offensive weapons at schools following last Wednesday’s stabbing incident involving two BB Coke High students.

Head of the St Elizabeth police, Superintendent Dwight Daley, said the incident, which happened about 2:30 pm, left both students nursing wounds after an altercation in the town of Junction.

He said the students have been charged with unlawful wounding and are scheduled to appear in the Santa Cruz Children’s Court on Friday, June 17.

A video of the incident, which has since gone viral, shows two grade 10 male students in a tussle before wielding what appeared to be knives at each other. One of the students attempted to escape from the other, but was stabbed in his lower back, while other students hurled expletives.

“We are going to step up our operations in the schools [and on] the buses that take students and see how many weapons we can get out of the hands of these students,” he added.

Daley said the increased operations will not only be focused on students but order in public spaces.

“We normally police our major towns – Black River, Santa Cruz, and Junction – anywhere people gather in large numbers, there is the possibility for conflict. We normally try to police those spaces as well as it is in those spaces that we have some financial institutions and businesses that generate a lot of funds and we also want to prevent robberies,” he said.

When asked if the St Elizabeth police are seeing a trend of cases involving violence among students, Superintendent Daley pointed out that the incidents are “one-off”.

“I wouldn’t say we are seeing an increase…. we are planning some operations in the various schools where we are going to search for weapons and seize them,” he said.

He said the police continue to provide conflict resolution support.

“When we get to the root of the problem then we can assist better in resolving the issue. We normally call in the various stakeholders – victims support unit, Child Protection and Family Services Agency, the school management and the parents… We warn people not to escalate the issue,” he said.

He pointed to last February’s incident in which an agreement was reached between parents after a pen was lodged in the forehead of a boy at Maggotty High, being inflicted by another student.

“The parents decided that even though a child was injured they wanted to take another route. They did not want to bring it into the justice system. We allow that when we are so asked by the parents and the students to take that course of action, but once we get involved and a breach of the law has [occurred] then we proceed to a charge and bring the matter before the courts, for the courts to deal with it from there,” he said.

Kasey Williams