Clarendon cops hope to reap rewards with GRAPE

LIKE THE fruit from which it takes its name, GRAPE - an anti-crime initiative of the Clarendon police - is being carefully nurtured by crime fighters in the parish who are hopeful it will yield sweet results.

As part of a move to rescue at-risk youths, the police have partnered with civic groups and businesses in the parish for GRAPE - Gang Reduction And Prevention Education.

The programme aims, among other things, to provide children and youths with the skills necessary to combat the stresses that set the stage for gang involvement.

It also aims to provide youths with the necessary skills that will enable them to avoid the perils of gang membership.

"Normally, if you give a man a skill and he gets a job, the tendency for him to get involved with gang and gang activities would be greatly reduced," Dathan Henry, senior superintendent of police for the parish, told a Parish Development Forum hosted by The Gleaner last Thursday.

GRAPE, which is in its pilot phase, now targets 24 delinquent youngsters in the parish. The youngsters, who are in grade 9, were recommended to the police by deans of discipline from 12 schools.

"We interview the students to determine some of things that impact their behaviour; the links between home, community and school. We then use those findings to execute workshops at the various schools and include teachers, parents, and the students themselves," Henry said.

"What we do is like e-mentoring, one-to-one, homework programme and social and civic development. How they must operate in a formal environment, how to address persons - the dos and don'ts because most of the times they do not know what to do, so tend to shy away and behave in their own little subculture and they see us against them," the senior policeman said.

Henry, however, said it has not been easy to win the confidence of the youths now in GRAPE.

"It takes a lot out of us to really convince them that really we are one, we are equal. Where I am you can also achieve if you make the turnaround," Henry said.

He added: "So normally we start with ourselves. Tell them listen, 'We are from poor backgrounds just like you, but we never gave up. Our parents insisted that we must go to school and learn and saw to it that we did learn by doing the homework and whenever anything went wrong, they came to school to see about it.'

"We explain to these boys that we stuck to the task because we had the pride of the family to protect and though we never had the sort of resources now available to them, we faced similar challenges and they too can achieve."

The Clarendon police are documenting all the challenges and triumphs along the way in the hope of using the pilot project to create a template for similar initiatives which can be replicated in other parishes.