Old folks wisdom tells us to bend the tree from its young. And that’s just what the Police Department is doing by going into primary schools – and discussing with students the perils of a life of crime. Police say that if they don’t do it – someone else will – and that other someone is usually a criminal. Jacqueline Godwin found out more today.
Jacqueline Godwin Reporting,
There are just four weeks to go before these children will be on their summer holiday. It should be a time for fun and recreation, but it’s also when children are pressured by criminals. While some manage to stay out of trouble others are easy prey.
Douglas Hyde, Police Youth Coordinator
“The younger kids, some of them as you know they are not fully mature so to make decisions they are not totally there yet to make mature decisions. So by having somebody older than them, they peer pressure them into making negative decisions. It is more easy to influence them.”
To help the children make the right decision the police have gone pro-active
Douglas Hyde,
“We have used it several times in the past and we’ve realized that several young persons who got older, come back and told us that the talk that we gave to them helped them, it made them realize that they need to do something different in their life. We have several young persons who from primary school or high school, see me in the street and told me thanks for the talk and that helped me look at life differently, thanks to the person who I brought in the talk too because what we do is bring persons who have been there, done that, who’ve been to jail and experienced a negative way of life and try to talk to them so they don’t do that.”
But would the inspirational intervention have any impact on the students at St. Mary’s Primary School? That is where we found police youth coordinator Douglas Hyde speaking to the standard six students.
Douglas Hyde,
“What we are doing is taking a proactive move and to visit the schools and talk to these kids about crime and violence, how not to get involved, what to do during their holiday break that is going to come up and presently we are trying to educate them and sensitize them more about what is happening presently and how they can be a positive impact to it right now by not being out in the streets late at night, by encouraging their parents to continue to do the positive things for them by going back to school or by doing positive things during the summer time.”
Former inmate twenty four year old Jermaine McDougal delivered a presentation that caught the attention of the students. He was raised by his well-meaning
grandmother but he gave in to peer pressure, and that landed him behind bars. It has only been six months since his release from the Hattieville Prison but he is doing what he can to help children not make the mistakes he did.
Jermaine McDougal, Former Prison Inmate
“Most of my life I lived with my grandmother and then she was trying to teach me what was right. Because of following friends, I decided to go on my own and then like I was telling the students, it doesn’t pay to try be like somebody else – be yourself. That is what catches a lot of young people on the street right now. They watch the TV, see someone with a big chain on and a clean tennis and they want to be like that person so they hang with them, the older people on the street give them guns, and tell them to go rob if they want to make a quick money. You go and commit a robbery because you want a nice pants, a nice shirt and that makes no sense. You should work for yourself and buy those same things. It happened to me because when I came out of prison I didn’t have any job. Everyday I got up and made a little pastry to sell.”
The students seem to have been inspired but it’s left to seen if they will do what they promised.
Student #1,
“Cause I want to make my mom proud and be successful in life so I could take care of her when she gets older.”
Student #2,
“He told us about what he’s been through and how we don’t have to go through that, we just have to finish our education and so.”
Jacqueline Godwin,
And you will try hard and do that?
Student #2,
“Yes ma’am.”
Student #3,
“We should try and get our education to try and be somebody in this life.”
Student #4,
“I will them that I want to be something in life and I want to make my mom proud too and the young boy told us we don’t have to do anything like that, we can just go through school.”
Douglas Hyde,
“This is an initiative of the Police Department and Youth for the Future. The initiative itself combines with the Police Department’s Zone Beat Liasion Officers and also other branches of the Police Department. So when we visit a school, maybe that school’s issue is drugs and we might bring the Anti-Drug Unit to talk to them, if the issue is of behaviour, we bring the Zone Beat Liaison Officers or like when we realize now some of them are having problems with health so we invite HECOPAB or NDACC to come and talk to them about health issues or stuff like that.”
Jacqueline Godwin for 7NEWS.
