A team of students from Ivanna Eudora Kean High School won the second annual Law and You Academic Quiz Bowl on Friday, a competition sponsored by the V.I. Police Department.
Four St. Thomas High Schools squared off in the head-to-head competition that tested students on legal subjects such as search and seizure, domestic violence, and robbery and burglary. The event was held in the Charlotte Amalie High School auditorium.
The Law and You program operates in several St. Thomas public, private and parochial schools, teaching students valuable information regarding federal and V.I. law. According to a news release from VIPD, the program provides youth with the information and guidelines they need to stay on the right side of the law.
More than 5,000 high school students participate in the program every year.
The Kean students won first place with 140 points; Seventh-day Adventist School placed second with 102 points; Sts. Peter and Paul School was third with 98 points; and All Saints School finished with 84 points.
Dannelly Samuel of Kean was named most valuable student in the competition.
Students were presented with various situations and asked to identify if they were lawful and, if not, what charges would be leveled against the suspects. The students were quizzed on the V.I. Legislature, local and federal court procedures, and other related subjects.
Judges for the event included De Graff, Department of Justice solicitor General Bernard M. ZanSluytman, Justice’s counsel to the attorney general Monica Williams-Carbon, U.S. Attorney Ronald W. Sharpe and alternate judge ATF Agent Bennie Mims.
Other partners in the program included Project Safe Neighborhoods, the Departments of Education, and Justice, the Attorney General’s Office, the Superior Court and the Bureau of Corrections.
VIPD officers run the program in the schools. Judges, attorneys and federal agents regularly take part in the instruction and students take field trips to the jails, the courts and the morgue as part of the program.