Police serious about monitoring buses, students - Lewis

Livern Barrett, Senior Gleaner Writer

GAMING LOUNGES and fast food restaurants, which the police say have become hang out spots for students during school hours, have now landed in the cross-hairs of tough-talking Senior Superintendent Radcliffe Lewis.

Lewis, who is the head of the Police Traffic Division, said he has received complaints indicating that students have shifted their "lewd behaviour" to some of these business places, especially in downtown Kingston and Half-Way Tree, St Andrew.

He said the police plan to meet with these business operators to warn them that they will will be prosecuted if they continue to allow students to hang out in their business places, especially while they are in uniform.

SSP Lewis said his office will also be holding discussions with the director of public prosecutions to determine what charges can be brought against businesses that fail to comply.

Students found loitering in any business place during or after school hours will be taken to the Elletson Road Police Station and their parents summoned.

According to Lewis, they will be warned and released to their parents after a note is made in the station's juvenile-caution register.

Guidance for students

He made it clear that the initiative was being undertaken by his division to help provide students with some form of guidance.

"These youngsters just want some guidance and for somebody to monitor them in the right way, because they are the future prime ministers, lawyers and doctors, so we have to protect them," he told The Gleaner on Monday.

This clampdown on students will form part of the Traffic Division's overall push to streamline the operations of public passenger vehicles and the use of public spaces in the Corporate Area.

On Monday, the police, along with personnel from the Transport Authority, fanned out across the Corporate Area to crack down on illegal taxis and buses with tints darker than what is legally allowed.

By midday, Lewis said 20 persons were prosecuted for operating contrary to their road licences and bus operators had their licence plates removed because their tints were too dark.

The crackdown on the heavily tinted buses, which came on the first day of the new school year, is part of an attempt to bring an end to the lewd activities that reportedly takes place on some public-passenger vehicles.

"This is not going to be a one-day initiative. This started four months ago and was only intensified this (yesterday) morning, but it is not going to be a one-day initiative," he insisted.

livern.barrett@gleanerjm.com