Port-of-Spain City Cor­po­ra­tion chair­man Al­der­man Wayne Grif­fith has for­giv­en the stu­dents that vi­o­lent­ly at­tacked him, but he still wants puni­tive ac­tion tak­en.

Speak­ing with Guardian Me­dia days af­ter he was as­sault­ed by stu­dents of the Tran­quil­li­ty Gov­ern­ment Sec­ondary School af­ter try­ing to quell a fight, Grif­fith said school vi­o­lence has turned in­to a form of gang vi­o­lence.

“From the depths of my heart, I do for­give them...But what I would say, it would be com­plic­it of me to just walk away and give them a slap on the wrist and a pat on the shoul­der. That is not where I’m go­ing with this. I think that some form of ac­tion should be tak­en. It’s much more than five of them. They swarmed me. It was a bar­rage of them, and it was re­al­ly a form of group and gang vi­o­lence… I think that there is a grow­ing amount of group and gang vi­o­lence with­in the school, and for most, the Gov­ern­ment has been talk­ing about de­ten­tion or­ders for gang lead­ers, etc, but the school is re­al­ly the new tree of where crim­i­nal ac­tiv­i­ty is born these days,” Grif­fith said.