School Districts Employ ‘Star Wars’ Techniques to Fight Campus Crime

Down the hall from the stacks of schoolbooks and paper supplies, in a small, dimly lighted office, a computer keeps an electronic eye on hundreds of classrooms in the Norwalk-La Mirada Unified School District.

Every 30 seconds, the computer’s tiny microchip memory scans for any alarm on the district’s 37 campuses that has been tripped by even the slightest movement--from a falling book to an intruder.

At the push of a button, the desk-top terminal, manned around the clock by a dispatch operator, also can switch on lights at any of the campuses spread across 15 square miles of suburban southeast Los Angeles County.

The computer is one of the so-called “Star Wars” security measures that a growing number of school districts across the nation are installing to fight crime. In the southeast part of the county and the Long Beach areas, schools are using a battery of expensive techniques, from computers to heat-sensing alarms to security officers, to combat crime on campuses. And they say that, for the first time in years, they are beginning to win the battle. A Times survey of 13 school districts showed that, in the last five years, the number of crimes against property and the dollar losses have dropped in all but three school systems: Bellflower, Montebello and Compton.

Districts have had to pay the price for success. Last year the state’s 1,043 school districts spent a record $48.5 million protecting students, teachers and property, double what was spent a decade ago.

Nowhere have the results been as remarkable as in the Norwalk-La Mirada Unified School District.

The district’s $269,000-a-year protection plan has dramatically reduced vandalism, theft and arson in the once crime-ridden district. Crimes have dropped 85% since the district plugged in its crime-fighting computer and began security patrols in April, 1980.

In Norwalk-La Mirada, crime-related property damage and losses were averaging $345,000 a year. Last year, the losses dropped to an estimated $50,000. Before 1980, the district logged nearly 1,000 crime calls a year. In the 1983-84 school year, there were only 130 incidents.

Similar success has been reported in the Whittier City School District, where crime losses a year ago in the elementary school system fell to $6,939, a five-year low.

And in the Bellflower, Montebello, Downey and ABC school districts, the number of reported incidents dropped by as much as 86% between 1979 and 1984.

Only Compton, where the number of incidents jumped from 243 to 420 and property losses went from $73,236 to $339,738 in the last three years, reported runaway increases. But some district officials and teachers there question the numbers, saying that the huge increases are the result of more accurate crime reporting last year, not a big jump in vandalism, theft and arson.

School crime statistics have been suspect for years, in part because individual school districts had not been required to report them to the state Department of Education. Some districts had wanted to minimize their campus crime problems.

A package of new laws taking effect in 1985 allows districts to fine and jail persons who refuse to leave a school and requires districts to report all crime incidents and losses to the Department of Education.

Local and state officials say that crime figures for schools in Los Angeles County, one of five California counties that already require such reports, are better than most and serve to signal trends--in this case the first strong evidence in years that area districts are gaining in the campus crime fight.

Educators, police and students are optimistic because:

- Students are showing more pride in their schools.

- School districts have armed campuses with high technology to reduce crime.

- There is a greater awareness of the problem.