School Police Seek OK to Write Tickets

Frustrated by auto accidents and congestion around school campuses, members of the Los Angeles Unified School District Police Department are seeking authorization to begin issuing traffic tickets.

“The bottom line is that our patrol officers see these violations and can’t do anything about it right now,” said Richard G. Keith, president of the school district’s Police Officers Assn.

“They see where they could help to create a safer environment around the schools and they feel like they’ve been given a gun without bullets. It’s really demoralizing.”

Nonetheless, district administrators believe that enforcing traffic laws should not be a duty of the school district’s 307 police officers, who, they say, are busy enough investigating on-campus crimes and providing other, more essential security services to 650 schools.

Yet Keith said school police officers believe they could readily take on traffic-enforcement tasks, which he estimated would bring to the school district’s coffers more than $1 million annually in ticket-related revenue.

The Police Officers Assn. has drafted an “open letter” to district officials hoping to gain support for the idea and plans to mail copies to school board members today, Keith said.

“With the violations that exist and the attitudes of many of those that perpetrate the violations, a totally unsafe and hazardous situation has been allowed to exist . . . ,” the letter states. “There is no school district site where traffic enforcement is sufficient--and the district ignores the problem.”

However, the Los Angeles Police Department, which has responsibility for enforcing traffic laws around school in the city, was hesitant to describe the problem in such critical terms.

“We get traffic complaints from almost every school, but the situation’s about like it’s always been--parents double-parking to pick up younger kids in front of elementary schools, high school kids stopping in the middle of the street to chat with other kids--that kind of thing,” said Sgt. Ron Barnes of the department’s Valley Traffic Bureau.

School police officers first proposed issuing tickets in 1984 but were rebuffed by school district administrators, according to Keith. This most recent drive to gain approval, he said, has been prompted by what he described as a rash of recent accidents on or near Los Angeles school campuses.

He cited as an example the death Monday of a 70-year-old school crossing guard, Anthony Panico, who was struck and killed as he stood on a sidewalk near Serrania Avenue Elementary School in Woodland Hills. The driver of the car that hit Panico--the second guard to be killed in Los Angeles County in three years--swerved to avoid hitting another vehicle that was pulling away from a crowded curb.

Keith said school police get no respect from many drivers who block the streets, speed and flagrantly violate other vehicular laws because they know that the officers are, in most cases, powerless to stop them. He complained that the officers have received little support from their own top police administrators on the issue of traffic enforcement.

“Some of our officers have shown initiative and gone into (other) police departments, and got (traffic) citation books assigned to them,” Keith said. “The officer will start writing tickets, but then when (the school district) hears about it, they jump all over him and make him give the ticket book back.”

School district police Chief Richard W. Green acknowledged that other school police agencies in California routinely enforce traffic laws in or near their respective campuses, and that his officers “have the capability” to do the same.

‘Understands’ Frustration

“But the district feels that that’s general law enforcement’s responsibility . . .,” Green said. “I can understand the officers’ frustration and I can see an advantage in handing out tickets, but I still work for the district and I see their position, too, and that is they don’t want (school police) moving into the community.”

Green said school administrators fear that if given authorization to make traffic stops, district police could engage in high-speed pursuits that could end in lawsuits should innocent persons be killed or injured.

“There’s a tremendous civil liability there,” Green said.

Assistant School Supt. Sidney A. Thompson, in charge of district operations, criticized the concept of raising revenue by citing students who park or drive illegally on campus. “I’m more concerned about educating the kids as to where to park,” he said.

He conceded that there are traffic problems around Los Angeles’ public schools, particularly at high schools where students’ cars share space with those of teachers, “but it has not been presented to me as an overriding problem.”

Thompson noted that the LAPD and Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department have routinely provided assistance when traffic enforcement was needed around specific campuses.

For example, a special LAPD traffic team is expected this afternoon to begin cracking down on errant motorists around San Fernando High School.

“Don’t get me wrong,” Keith said. “We welcome their help. But if we could write tickets, maybe we wouldn’t need the LAPD, which doesn’t have the time and the manpower to do the job all the time.”