Police to Step Up Patrols Near School : Crime: Officers and Roosevelt High officials hope that if students feel safer, more will go to class.

Every morning and afternoon, Christina Aros, a 16-year-old sophomore, walks about six blocks back and forth from Roosevelt High School in Boyle Heights. Each time she must pass Evergreen Park, where she fears getting caught in gang cross-fire.

“Just the other day a car passed by and started shooting at people in the park,” said the dark-haired teen-ager, who has witnessed several shootings in the area.

On Friday, Los Angeles police set up a new “safe school program” for Roosevelt High students, targeting a quarter-square-mile area around the school--including the park--for about 10 hours a day--when students are in school or traveling to and from their homes.

The three-month pilot project is the latest of several anti-crime offensives set up by police to thwart crime in specific neighborhoods. Last October, police erected barricades in communities such as Pico Union, South-Central, Mar Vista and the San Fernando Valley to stop gang activity and stem the flow of drugs.

This program will be the first in East Los Angeles and the first to target a school and its environs for special enforcement.

The idea, Police Chief Daryl F. Gates said at a press conference outside Roosevelt on Friday morning, grew out of an experience earlier this year at Jefferson High School in South-Central Los Angeles. After police set up a special enforcement zone near the school to stem crime and drug traffic, teachers noticed an increase in student attendance--apparently because students felt safer on the streets.

“We found after we put in rather intensive policing--and reduced drive-by shootings and narcotics activity--that a wonderful thing happened,” Gates said. “About 200 kids who weren’t going to school (at Jefferson) returned to school. From that, we decided to do this.”

School officials said Roosevelt does not have a crime problem or even an absentee rate markedly higher than the Los Angeles Unified School District’s high school average. Roosevelt Principal Henry Ronquillo said that on an average school day 300 to 400 students out of about 4,000 do not attend due to truancy or for legitimate reasons.

But school officials and members of the largely low-income Latino community just east of downtown Los Angeles said there had been a dramatic increase in violent crimes in the neighborhoods near Roosevelt and other schools in the area.

The community has been pushing for more patrols for more than a year, said Antonio Legaspi, a 46-year-old welder who heads Roosevelt’s school advisory council.

“We’re asking for better protection, and we want this all the time, not just for three months,” he said.

Rachel Aros, Christina’s mother, said that a few nights ago she watched adults screaming at children playing in Evergreen Park to “Get down! Stay down!” during a drive-by shooting attempt.

“Almost every day we hear gunshots,” she said.

Housewife Teresa Jimenez said she has been called to pick up her 6-year-old at Breed Street Elementary School three times this year because shootings in the area made it too dangerous to continue classes.

Much of the crime increase is gang-related, police officials said. Bob Medina, captain of the Hollenbeck Division, which serves Boyle Heights, noted that there was a 68% increase in gang activity in the area last year and a 48% increase so far this year.

When the new program begins early next week, the quarter-square-mile area bounded by 1st, Soto and 6th streets and Evergreen Avenue will not be barricaded like other police enforcement zones have been.

Instead, signs made by Roosevelt students will be placed in the middle of the streets. They will read “Community-Police Enforcement Area” in English and Spanish.

Six one-officer patrol cars from Hollenbeck will be on duty in the area from 7 a.m. to 5 p.m., Gates said, along with one unit from the Los Angeles Unified School District police force.

A two-square-mile area encompassing several housing projects where gang activity is strong also will be more heavily patrolled.

Councilman Richard Alatorre, who represents the area, said a special effort was made to involve the school district and community organizations in the police effort.

“This project cannot be successful just involving the Police Department,” he said.