Another Brawl at Jefferson High

For the third time in six weeks, police broke up a Jefferson High School brawl Thursday that students say was fueled by racial tension.

Officers from the Los Angeles School Police Department used pepper spray and batons to quell the fight, which involved about 25 students on the South Los Angeles campus. The police arrested three students and detained more than 20 others, authorities said.

The incident reportedly began when two students argued about a cellphone. Students said that altercation sparked larger fights between black and Latino students across the campus.

“It started in the cafeteria, and then it spread out to the PE field, to the auditorium, to the hallways, everywhere. I saw some people run out of the classrooms just to get into the fight,” said Salvador Ingles, a 17-year-old senior. “Like with the last two fights, it happened that brown people, they go to one side, then black people go to the other side, and then they both collide.”

School officials also reported two separate fights at Los Angeles High School, Thursday. The brawls attracted several hundred onlookers and prompted a brief campus lockdown while two students were detained. No serious injuries were reported.

“I’m told there were some racial overtones” to the violence, district spokeswoman Susan Cox told the Associated Press.

The melee at Jefferson High School began about 12:40 when two Latino students argued about the phone, officials said. Administrators ordered a lockdown of the campus, and students were released from school about 600 at a time two hours later. The school nurse treated dozens of students for minor abrasions, and two students who were not involved in the fight were treated for hyperventilation. Six officers received minor injuries.

The fight occurred on the eve of a planned Day of Dialogue that district officials scheduled after similar brawls April 14 and April 18.

Although students and parents have complained that the fights have had heavy racial overtones, Jefferson Principal Norm Morrow denied those assertions Thursday.

“It had nothing to do with race,” he said of the brawl. “The majority of our kids are good kids. We’ve got to get people to understand that some kids aren’t here for the right reason.”

Nevertheless, Morrow said that the campus was experiencing problems and that he expected many parents would keep their children home today.

“I don’t blame them,” he said. “You don’t want kids coming to a place where there are fights every day.” After making that statement, however, Morrow paused and said fights did not occur at Jefferson every day.

He said that classes would be limited to half-day today and that the Day of Dialogue would go on. The event, he said, would involve professionals from local government and federal law enforcement discussing with students the reasons for the fights.

Los Angeles School Police Chief Alan Kerstein played down the incident Thursday, saying it wasn’t clear that it was racially motivated. “Today it was just two males getting involved in a fight, and it just precipitated to a number of fights,” he said. But he acknowledged that he wasn’t sure how the school or the police could prevent such incidents.

“I don’t know if there’s anybody in the country who’s an expert on how to stop this,” Kerstein said outside the school. “How do you get people to treat each other with respect? How do you get people to be tolerant of our differences?”

Of the 2,500 students who attend Jefferson, about 92% are Latino and 7% are black.

As police surrounded the school and cordoned off nearby streets, angry parents waited for their children to be released. Some students carried signs that read, “I Survived the Jefferson Riots!!”

Ignacio Garcia said he was part of a group of parents pushing administrators to make changes. Among other ideas, parents have suggested that students wear uniforms and be given lessons about respecting other cultures.

“We have given them suggestions, and they say they’ll work on it

Parent Katie Carruthers said she received a tearful call from her daughter asking for a ride home. “I think they need better security,” Carruthers said. “Really, they need to call the National Guard out here for a couple of days to get everything under control.”

Times staff writer Monte Morin contributed to this report.