Police Candor Refreshing

The San Diego Police Department is to be commended for quickly investigating complaints about its response to a student protest at Gompers Secondary School in Southeast San Diego and for straightforwardly acknowledging that the police overreacted.

Forty officers, some with trained dogs and two in riot gear, responded to the school after the police were called by school security officers. Deputy Police Chief Manuel Guaderrama said that was far too many officers; the normal response would have been to send about 14 officers from the schools task force and to have them gather at a staging area away from the campus until they had more information. Guaderrama said the inappropriate action resulted from miscommunication within the Police Department.

The heavy police response was particularly unfortunate because it exacerbated an already tense situation at the science, math and computer magnet school. Some teachers and parents have been unhappy about a decision last year to extend the magnet’s high-powered curriculum to all of the overwhelmingly nonwhite neighborhood students. The student demonstration was over the transfer of a business education teacher who was an outspoken critic of the new policy.

But, by quickly admitting its mistake, the Police Department has helped defuse the new tensions.