Parents of students at School “Escola Básica e Integrada Canto da Maia”in São Miguel, Azores are expressing concern about some episodes that are taking place at the school, alerting the Regional Command of the Public Security Police.
One of the parents describes the threat with a razor that a student at the Canto da Maia School made to his daughter and that, when he went to ask the School Board for an explanation, the Director “told me to file a complaint with the PSP and that’s what I did” because, as a parent, “I have the right and duty to protect my daughter”.
This father says that he was “well looked after” at the PSP police station, where “a chief” told him that “it would be the school’s obligation to file a complaint, which it didn’t do”.
The same father recounts another episode, which took place on January 30: At around 11am, his daughter sent him a photo of a revolver bullet in her hand, which she herself went to hand in to the School Council.
These episodes were described by father Tiago Faria in a Facebook post which, yesterday, already had 500 shares and dozens of comments, many from other parents, who didn’t hide their concern about what is happening at the Canto da Maia Basic and Integrated School.
Tiago Cabral encourages other parents to question their children about what is happening at the school because, as he says, “they may be afraid to tell what is happening at the school”. A post that Tiago Faria considers an “outburst from a protective father and a father who is angry about the lack of security in a school where many children study.”
Several parents have reported testimonies from their children, pupils at Escola Básica e Integrada Canto da Maia, saying that they see pupils carrying knives around the school, which has led the PSP Regional Command to ask these parents to contact the nearest PSP Police Station.

PSP “monitoring situation”

In response to the post, the PSP Regional Command said that the situation “is being carefully monitored by the Safe School team at the Ponta Delgada Police Station.
The PSP of the Azores recommends, in this regard, “that all citizens or victims, whenever they become aware of suspicious situations or situations related to the commission of illicit acts, contact any PSP police station as soon as possible and by any means, in order to trigger police intervention in a timely manner and in the interests of better service to the community”.
“In this sense,” continues the PSP Regional Command, “we call on everyone to avoid using social networks as a platform to cause panic among the school community or others, but rather to contact and report these situations to the PSP.”
At the time we received this information, it was no longer possible to contact the Executive Board of the Canto da Maia Basic and Integrated School, which we will do throughout today.

João Paz is a journalist for the Correio dos Açores newspaper–Natalino Viveiros, director