Spate of Attacks Show Youth Vulnerability

Gunshots that ring out at the edge of a school campus, like those that wounded a teen-ager in Santa Ana on Thursday, can pierce not only the bodies of their victims but the community’s confidence that it can protect its children as they attend class each day.

A rash of recent shootings near schools in Orange and Los Angeles counties provides a reminder to police and school administrators that no matter how hard they try to shield them, students are increasingly vulnerable as their society and their neighborhoods become more dangerous.

On Thursday, a 14-year-old girl was shot in the hand as she left Santa Ana’s Lathrop Intermediate School. It was the fifth shooting in Orange County since classes began this fall, and came only days after a 16-year-old cheerleader was gunned down outside her school in Paramount in Los Angeles County. A 20-year-old man was shot outside a Baldwin Park school on Friday.

Many districts provide campus security guards, and some, like Santa Ana, even post armed police officers on campus. Police do their best to patrol the streets surrounding the schools. But everyone involved in the effort to keep children safe admits there is only so much that can be done.

Santa Ana Police Lt. Bob Helton said police are under extra pressure when crime strikes innocent children outside schools, since parents want so dearly to believe their kids are safe going to class. Citizens seem to want police officers patrolling everywhere at once, stopping crime before it happens.

“Even if we concentrate patrols around a school for seven blocks, say, what might be going on in the eighth block? Or the ninth or the 10th block?” Helton said.

Nevertheless, the Santa Ana Police Department planned to have extra patrols on hand outside Lathrop Intermediate School when school let out Friday. Citing tactical security, Helton declined to say whether the additional patrols would continue into next week.

Santa Ana Unified School District spokeswoman Diane Thomas said that in addition to the armed police on high school campuses, the district has unarmed security guards at all its intermediate and high schools. But it relies on the police for safety beyond the campus fence.

“How far can we extend ourselves? It’s not our mission to be in charge of security in the streets of Santa Ana,” she said. “But we have 43 campuses, and they have a whole city out there and only so much manpower.”

In the Garden Grove Unified School District, police officers have been posted at the high schools for two decades. But Andrew McTaggart, assistant superintendent for secondary education, said that once the youths leave campus, they walk into a world fraught with danger.

“You pray nothing will happen to any of them, but you know there’s no guarantee that 100% of them will come back the next morning,” McTaggart said. “It’s not even limited to gang violence. It’s the things they do over the weekend. There’s always an element of risk, on the freeway, surfing or in a gang-related community.”

Garden Grove Police Sgt. Mark Byrne, who supervises the officers on the district’s campuses, said that when high school students are dismissed in the afternoon, officers based on the campuses keep an eye on them, backed up by administrators who watch the exits with walkie-talkies.

But no matter how intensely officers patrol school campuses, tragedy will still occur, Byrne said. “You can’t prevent a drive-by shooting.”

In Anaheim Union High School District, no police officers or private security guards are assigned to campuses. But through various programs, district employees try to supply security and provide a deterrent to crime.

Rick Krey, a gang suppression specialist, said campus aides cruise in golf carts to keep an eye on things, and administrators watch the exits as students leave in the afternoon, even using telephoto lenses to snap pictures of strangers who try to gain entry to campus.

But schools cannot be viewed as safe havens when the surrounding communities their share of crime.

“Schools do not operate in a vacuum,” said Jacqueline Price, spokeswoman for Capistrano Unified School District. “They are an integral part of the neighborhood that they’re in. When something happens in the neighborhood, it unfortunately spills over negatively onto the school.”