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Law Enforcement Officials Team to Provide Students Safe Passage
Recent operation targeting individuals known to harass students on their way to, from school nets two arrests

By Allison Jean Eaton
Bulletin Editor

COMPTON—As a new school year kicks into gear, school police and sheriff’s deputies are again teaming to ensure local high school students are able to get to and from school without being harassed by gang members.

The Safe Passage program, funded with grants from the state Department of Justice, puts additional patrol cars on the streets surrounding the school district’s three high schools during the hour before and the hour after school.

It is thought that their increased presence will deter gang members who often pressure students to join gangs, take drugs or otherwise harass students.

With more than 65 known gangs and roughly 11,000 active gang members in this 10.5-square-mile city of roughly 100,000, the sheer saturation of gangs puts most students at risk of coming into contact with loitering gang members.

According to the state attorney general’s Crime and Violence Prevention Center, the objective is to create a multiagency enforcement partnership to provide safety from gang-related crimes against high school students on specific streets, at bus stops and on bus lines immediately surrounding schools.

The six-year-old program, comprised of school staff, volunteer organizations, concerned parents and others, came on the coattails of the state attorney general’s commission of a survey of schools in California.

Results revealed that the majority of students, especially those in urban areas, feel their most major scholastic problem is safely getting to and from campus. They reported being the victims of armed robberies, drive-by shootings, gang harassment and other crimes.

Such is the case of Robert Grant Jr., who, while attending Compton High School, would have to cross through two different gang territories to get to school each day. His sister, LaTasha Kelly, told The Bulletin in May that he had been shot at and offered drugs.

Last year, officials said there were major problems with gang members stealing students’ personal belongings, even ripping jewelry from students’ necks.

Compton Station ServiceArea Lt. Tony Lucia said two cars are assigned to each Compton school. The funding covers the cars for Centennial and Compton high schools.

“Dominguez is not officially part of the program, but we still try to get over there and do patrols,” Lucia said.

Dominguez is not included on the books because, at the time the grant was first secured in 2006, the focus was on Centennial and Compton, schools Lt. Joseph Gooden said had “serious problems.”

The Bulletin made several requests for information regarding the school police’s part in the program, but several inquiries both by e-mail and telephone have gone unanswered for weeks.

Lucia said additional agencies are involved. Each month a committee comprised of school police, district administrators and representatives from the Sheriff’s Department, Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA), City Attorney’s office and county departments of Child and Family Services and Probation meet to talk about the previous month’s statistics, problems and specifics on particular gang activities.

Particular attention is paid to gang flare-ups, Lucia explained.

“We try to focus our efforts on those particular hotspots,” he said. “We try to identify potential hazards and deal with those.”

Joe Faulkner, a probation officer and supervisor for the L.A. County Probation Department, described Safe Passage as a multi-agency collective.

“It’s a group of people who collaborate to provide children safety to and from school,” said Faulkner, who oversees the program at Compton and Centennial.

But it’s not just the committee’s member agencies that can help—something as simple as an adult presence can ward off a wide range of problems, officials said.

And it’s all about getting creative.

For instance, at Washington High in Los Angeles, students identified a municipal bus stop adjacent to a drug house frequented by gang members. The school’s committee got together with the MTA and moved the bus stop a few hundred feet away from the house, where students can wait more comfortably, Faulkner said.

Students aren’t the only ones who reap the benefits. Areas surrounding schools typically experience lower crime rates and residents, overall, feel safer because of the heightened visibility of law enforcement and others assisting in the creation of so-called safe zones.

“What we’ve done is identified their (students’) most traveled routes and put our resources there,” Probation Officer Stan Ricketts said. “We know that if we can get them there (school), we can get their truancy down, we can get their attendance up, we can get their GPA up and we can decrease their chance of recidivism.”Friday, Aug. 29, local law enforcement officials conducted an unannounced sweep targeting 15 locations throughout the city where known gang members reside and routinely harass students. The sweep was conducted just before the first day of school, Sept. 2.

Those targeted are all on probation or parole, and two were arrested on outstanding warrants, Lucia said.

The operation aimed to send a message to gang members that a zero-tolerance policy is in place.

“Just the fact that we made contact has an affect,” Lucia said. “They know why we ’re there.”