On the Front Lines of War Against Gangs : Schools: At Manual Arts High, gangs are a part of daily life. Principal Robert Barner’s ‘common-sense’ approach tries to minimize their influence and prevent violence.

The student had a large gang tattoo under his eye. “Keep it covered or you can’t stay here,” Manual Arts High Principal Robert Barner warned.

The student had other ideas. “He was sitting right here in the office,” Barner says of last summer’s confrontation. “He told me if he did not stay, (his gang) would turn the place inside out.”

Barner stood his ground. “We did not allow him to remain,” he says. And? “His buddies did not destroy our school or wreak havoc.”

Recently, Barner saw the student across the street from campus. “He was arrested about two days after that for violation of parole. He went to juvenile detention camp. He’s only 16.”

Such is life on the front lines for some school administrators, caught in the now-daily battle to keep their kids and their campuses free of gang violence.

(Gang influence is another story. Some administrators have conceded that gang members will be on their campuses and in their neighborhoods. They just don’t want them to fight or cause trouble.)

The battles can be frustrating, fatiguing and fought mostly uphill. At Manual Arts, a tough, varied strategy--part district policy, part the school’s invention--seems to be gaining relatively encouraging results.

As a first step, school officials try to reduce the chance of conflict before students enroll.

Each year, Manual Arts administrators screen hundreds of potential transfers from schools or juvenile detention centers. Their goal is to find students with gang affiliations. Their working goal is not to keep out all gang members, just those who belong to the wrong gangs.

Barner estimates there are about 200 gang members in the student body of 2,500.

If a potential transfer belongs to a gang hostile to those already on campus, school officials strongly urge the parents to send their child elsewhere.

Among 300 incoming transfers this year, about 60 decided they’d be better off at another school, the principal says.

Barner, who started screening transfers seven years ago as a Manual Arts dean, says the decision was “common sense”:

“Why accept kids who get into a fight as soon as they get on campus?”

This common-sense approach seems to work. “There’re a lot of gang members on campus. But the actual gang activity as a general rule is kind of low-key,” says Sgt. Tony O’Brien of the LAPD’s Southwest Division, which patrols the area around Manual Arts, a few blocks from the Coliseum.

Because gangs do frequent the area, police say, the school padlocks all gates and each day opens only one entrance, watched by a staff volunteer.

Two uniformed LAPD officers wearing 9-millimeter Baretta pistols patrol the grounds, while another monitors the perimeter. Six unarmed security agents also walk the campus. In addition, three LAPD squad cars cruise the neighborhood.

During breaks and at lunch, Barner and other administrators walk the campus themselves, two-way radios on their belts so they can stay in touch with police and security officers.

They are looking for signs of trouble--or potential trouble--and try to enforce the school dress code: No hats, oversized baggy pants, trousers with slits at the bottom or other items considered obvious gang apparel.

The watch is often a bit uneasy, because at Manual Arts the gang presence is clear. During one recent lunch hour, while seniors bought class rings, the 18th Street Gang met near the student store, and the Rolling 30s and Hoover Crips each gathered at separate ends of the campus eating area.

Across the street from school, raucous 18th Street Gang members gather by the video games at the King Swap Meet. The manager says they sometimes fight, scaring away customers.

However, several other neighborhood business owners say gangs haven’t caused them any recent problems.

Most times the campus security system works, but occasionally it breaks down.

In May, 1990, a 19-year-old senior was wounded twice on a crowded volleyball court in an apparent gang-related shooting. His 17-year-old assailant, who was not a student, jumped a perimeter fence and escaped. The assailant was arrested and convicted, police say.

“I just froze. I couldn’t move,” says Luisa, now 17, who watched the shooting from three feet away.

“When I saw him falling, I tried to stop him from hitting his head,” says Luisa, a senior who asks that her real name be withheld. “Then another girl came and helped him. She was screaming and telling everyone he got shot and to bring the nurse.”

That shooting was the first in 10 years, Barner says, although there have been a few shootings near the campus.

More often, incidents may be less violent, but still harrowing.

Last year, students told LAPD officers Henry Collins and Glenn Johnson that a boy was waving a gun outside a campus bungalow.

Approaching with guns drawn, the officers saw what appeared to be a .357 magnum tucked into the pants of a teen-ager talking to his girlfriend.

The weapon turned out to be a BB gun, a replica of a .357. “But if you saw it from a distance, or maybe up close, you wouldn’t know,” Johnson says.

Barner himself practices eternal vigilance.

As he left a Friday afternoon campus football game, students told him that two girls were about to fight in front of the school. He radioed campus police to check out the report, which proved groundless.

Later, he scolded a security guard for lounging against a building instead of patrolling. The next day Barner walked the campus during the morning break and confiscated two caps he considered gang apparel.

In the administration building, he noticed a student carrying a junior high year book with gang writing on the cover. He found an 18th Street Gang insignia inside. “It’s all mine,” he said, confiscating the book.

Teachers also watch for gang-related activity in classes.

If a student is practicing gang writing instead of doing an assignment, says biology teacher John Heston, “I have them put it away and get out paper and start doing what we’re supposed to be doing.

“You have to show the student respect,” Heston says. “If the student feels you respect them, no matter what affiliation they have, they are going to come into class with a different attitude.”

Because he gives students respect, Heston says, he’s never been threatened.

“It gets a little edgy when you see a student wearing a big coat in mid-July,” he says. “You look at it twice and visually frisk him. Your awareness is heightened that anything can happen at any time. You’re not running around neurotic, but you are aware of your immediate environment.”

Some students also feel they must be on guard all the time.

“A lot of people want to leave this school because it’s too dangerous,” says Henry, 18, a gang member who asks that his real name not be used. “I don’t feel real safe. There have been a lot of things happening like people getting jumped.”

Other students aren’t concerned about the gangs. “I’m not all worried (about it),” says junior Teresa Harris, 15. “I’m worried about getting to school on time (and) getting to school every day.”

Luisa says she felt unsafe after the 1990 shooting, but feels better today and worries only if her friends are involved in gang activities.

Luisa still thinks about the shooting she witnessed: “Why does it have to happen that they start an argument and they end up shooting each other?”

Barner, who became principal this fall, graduated from Manual Arts in 1967. He says his school will keep fighting to keep gang activity under control. “I’m here for one reason,” he says. “I want to see high academic achievement. I want racial harmony. I want to change the pattern of failure I see among low socioeconomic, inner-city students. The fighting is totally incongruent with that change.”

Sometimes, Barner says, he longs for the days when he attended Manual Arts. There were gangs, he says, but “it was easier then.”

Barner was not a gang member and often took the bus home to 59th Street, about a mile and a half away, to avoid harassment.

“The consequences were less. If you went into the wrong territory, maybe you’d get beat up or somebody would take your money. But nobody had guns. No one’s houses got burned down. There were no drive-by shootings. Cocaine and marijuana were virtually unheard of.”

Barner sighs. In those days, he says, “gang members were bold if you saw them smoking a cigarette.”