Having lunch with top cop

ACTING Commissioner of Police Everald Snaggs yesterday lauded the 30 young members of the Beetham Youth Club for being the first of the 45 other existing clubs in the country to develop their talent in music. A smiling Snaggs, accompanied by his wife Gwenderlyn, showed up for a lunch date with the club members at the Sweet Lime Restaurant on Ariapita Avenue, Port-of-Spain, shortly before 1 pm. They were greeted by a  medley of Christmas songs performed by the children, while Assistant Commissioner Winston Cooper and Sgt Sheila Prince of the Commissioner of Police Secretariat took the opportunity to show off their dancing skills.  Mr and Mrs Snaggs were seated opposite each other, each with two exhilarated girls on either side of them.

After the Acting Commissioner’s extremely short address, in which he admonished the youths to use their “Christmas presents productively,” the meal was blessed by Reverend Bernadine Arthur. The scrumptious lunch and dessert, which was sponsored by Sweet Lime was served by the restaurant’s staff. The children, were all dressed in festive red, white and green uniforms and Santa hats, that were sponsored by the Ministry of National Security, and each child wore new shoes courtesy Sweet Lime. They also received bags containing toys and games donated by several corporate sponsors.

The group, which was formed in March, was a pet project of Sgt Prince. According to Prince, she saw a need in the Beetham area for social development programmes. As a result, she took the task of going into the area and mobilising the youth and forming them into a club. The children in the group, she said, were between the ages of five and 14. Prince said she had found that the children were somewhat “aggressive” and her first project was to teach them etiquette. “The little values like saying  please, thank you and excuse me are more important than most people care to admit,” she said.  Following that, Prince said, the group were trained in elementary music by volunteer, Kelsiua Browne.  “Music makes you disciplined,” she said, “and discipline is something that these kids needed,” she added. According to Prince, the children had no prior knowledge of music but had since learned to play the “chac chac,” “tock tock” and tambourine reasonably well. Every Sunday for the past six weeks, she said, they had been visiting various geriatric homes and spreading the spirit of Christmas in song.  Training in computer skills, culinary skills and various artforms were projects she hoped to introduce in the near future.

Asked if he viewed the project as a crime fighting strategy, Snaggs said he did not see it as that, but more so “as an incentive to develop the youth in various areas and to divert them away from crime.”  With regards to similar projects in other “problem areas,” Snaggs said that different areas had different problems and the same strategy could not be used to tackle all these problems.  Dealing with these problems effectively would be costly, he said, but the Ministry of National Security had a fund set aside for Youth Enhancement Projects such as the Police Youth groups, he added. One member of the group, 13-year-old Nifeiash Warren, told the Newsday she viewed the project as “a good thing because nobody ever focused on the Beetham before.”