38 Cops learn how to conduct GREAT programme
Since Monday, thirty-eight law enforcement officers, including fifteen cops from outside of the country, started an intense two-week course in Gang Resistance Education Training. GREAT is a widely implemented gang and violence prevention programme in primary and high schools. And so a new set of officers who want a make a difference in the lives of the students took the step to become certified and today when we met them they were sitting an exam to review what they have learnt since the training started. Andrea Polanco stopped in at the Radisson today to find out more about the training. Here’s the story.
Andrea Polanco, Reporting
Thirty-eight cops, twenty-three from Belize and fifteen from El Salvador, are doing an eight-day course to become certified in the Gang Resistance Education and Training, better known as the GREAT programme. The police officers are learning skills to communicate with at risk students:
Joshua McKoy, Senior Instructor, GREAT Programme
Joshua McKoy
“They are teaching them the transition from being a police officer to teaching in the classroom which is a big difference. You know, people would look at police officers as being all strong, tough, but you have to realize you are dealing with kids, so you have to use a different level when it comes to inside the classroom. There is a practical component to the training. What you will have to do is that you woll have to model some of the lessons that they have, for example, there is a lesson called empathy and they have to model that in showing empathy for others. There is also another one which is peer pressure, so this will help the kids how to deal with that and also anger management because a lot of kids have anger issues. So, the police officers have been taught how to deal with anger, how to say no because sometimes they are approached and don’t know how to say no to the different temptations that are out there, especially at this time.”
The Gang Resistance Education And Training (GREAT) Program is a violence prevention programme being used to fight delinquency, youth violence, and gang involvement through school-based, law enforcement officer-instructed classroom courses. As of December of 2017, fifteen thousand students in Belize have graduated from the programme and McKoy says the impact is felt in many ways:
Joshua McKoy
“It teaches you how to talk to kids, discourages them from getting in gangs, violence and drugs, bullying. It also teaches them how to stay away from negative things in the community and how to be a part of the community, as they have a responsibility to their community and school. We have a lot of testimonials that show that the GREAT programme has really worked. There are kids that have that feeling towards the police and then when we start teaching them GREAT, by the time they graduate they don’t have that negative feelings towards the police. Some people even tell you thanks for coming into the classroom and some parents, when they see you say that my son and daughter have been taught GREAT and we want to thank you because there is a big change. The principal, the teachers, everybody gives positive results when it comes to GREAT.”
McKoy says that the opportunity to train and share ideas with authorities from El Salvador have proven to be helpful to Belize’s GREAT programme officers.
Joshua McKoy
“For many years they did it in El Salvador and now we are doing it here which helps us. It is good when we do it in different countries because it shares ideas. Things that work here might not work in El Salvador or things that are happening there we want to learn because they are a bigger country and they are a little more advanced and so we could use what we learn from there here in Belize.”
Andrea Polanco reporting for News Five.
The training wraps up on October twenty-fourth.
