A SENIOR lawman has admitted officers have not always got it right when dealing with incidents of a criminal nature at schools.
Acting Assistant Commissioner of Police, Erwin Boyce, acknowledged the force’s shortcomings during a presentation to principals of secondary schools and tertiary institutions at the Lloyd Erskine Sandiford Centre yesterday.
Boyce was at the time responding to a query from a principal on how to proceed in a situation where an incident occurs at a school that results in injury, and the parent makes a report to the police but is sent back to the school.
“In that particular instance we would not have gotten it right. If it is an assault and a battery that is a criminal offence and that is actionable . . . . You have a range of offences that are translated into the school environment. So there is assault in the bigger world [and] there is assault in school,” Boyce explained in his presentation Where The Functions of The Principal Stops And Those of The Police Start.
