As an initiative of the Board of Directors, headed by Chairman, Ms. Jacqueline Lazarus, MTS today launched a five-day “Train the Trainer” programme on “Youth-Centred Policing: School Based Law Enforcement;” which is being facilitated by Criminologist and Criminal Psychologist, Ms. Renee Cummings.
The programme is being conducted at MTS’ Corporate office, with 40 selected senior security and training personnel, who will be responsible for training and disseminating the information to MTS’ 2600 security staff.
The initiative speaks to MTS’ role as a provider of law enforcement in the school system to work with stakeholders in the education sector, to formulate school-specific violence prevention and early intervention programmes with crisis response plans, to re-tool and re-energise our personnel to be better equipped to deal with the changing school environment.
Speaking at the launch, the Company’s Chief Executive Officer, Mr. Lennox Rattansingh, reiterated MTS’ relevance to nation building and said that this is one of the objectives coming out of the Company’s Strategic Plan for 2016-2021.
Programmes
Ms Renee Cummings has compiled a list of topics to be addressed at the programmes. The list mentioned below is not exhaustive.
School Safety and Violence Prevention - Module I
- Mental Health - recognising signs of emotional disturbance etc
- Adolescent Development - development in key decision-making areas
- Implicit Bias - an understanding that all individuals harbour unconcious bias
- De-escalation Techniques - how to interact with and respond to students in crisis
Crisis Management - Module II
- Crisis audit
- Crisis as opportunity
- Crisis management
- High level threats
- Risk Management
- Psychology of crisis
- Specific threats to organisation
The facilitator - Ms Cummings is well equipped to execute these programmes. She specialises in audit, planning and delivery of coordinated criminal justice interventions and responses. Criminal justice intelligence is what she delivers; assisting governments and organisations in building worldwide links to strengthen crime prevention; incorporating new technologies in existing crime prevention strategies, developing behaviour and hardware strategies that interlink to reduce vulnerabilities; tailoring more proactive approaches to crime control and crime prevention.
This initiative is in tandem with the company's Vision Statement - exercising 'effective leadership and ensuring a clean, safe, secure and sustainable environment for communities'.
The Chief Executive Officer - Mr. Lennox Rattansingh, is of the view that school violence affects all of us, whether we are parents, students or consumers of news and MTS has a crucial and critical role to play in this phenomenon.