Probation Dept. to Add Campus Officers

In a timely coincidence, county probation officials announced a plan Thursday to bolster their force of officers assigned to Antelope Valley schools in the wake of a recent stabbing at one high school campus and a gun assault earlier this week at another high school.

The Probation Department, which now has one full-time officer for the region’s six high school campuses, plans to commit five full- or part-time officers to those campuses by March. The program had been scheduled to start last fall but was delayed by county budget problems.

The department now has five school-based officers in the Antelope Valley--one for the high schools and four at middle or elementary schools. The department plans to add three officers and shift the duties of some current staff members.

County officials said the move initially was aimed at combatting the worsening crime problems on high school campuses in the Antelope Valley. But it only coincidentally comes after the gun incident Tuesday at Antelope Valley High School and the stabbing a week earlier at Palmdale High School.

“I’ve been here 23 years and I’m appalled at what’s happening to our community,” said Steve Landaker, school board president of the 12,835-student Antelope Valley Union High School District. He said the district’s crime problem is “out of hand. It’s like a wildfire.”

Landaker applauded the new staffing and deployment, which is being funded jointly by the Probation Department and the office of county Supervisor Mike Antonovich, who represents the area. But Landaker said only parental involvement and discipline will curtail rising campus crime.

Although the district’s enrollment grew by several thousand students during the past three years, its rate of reported campus crime increased even faster. The district reported 1,018 incidents in the 1991-92 school year, more than 2 1/2 times the 396 incidents reported two years earlier.

The probation officers will join the five Los Angeles County sheriff’s deputies already assigned to the district’s five main campuses. No one is assigned full time to the continuation school. County probation officers are not armed and typically do not make arrests, though they do detain probation violators.

Last year, as part of a plan to recover from a mismanagement-induced $12-million budget shortfall, the high school district laid off six of its own security officers, cutting its force from 38 to 32, said Michael Rossi, assistant superintendent for personnel services.

Meanwhile, deputies said the Antelope Valley High School student sought in Tuesday’s gun incident surrendered Thursday at the Lancaster Sheriff’s Station. The 16-year-old Lancaster boy allegedly pointed an automatic handgun at the head of another student and threatened to kill him over a debt.

Another student was arrested Tuesday after security officers allegedly found the same gun and bags of marijuana in a car he had been driving. Sheriff’s Sgt. Bob Denham said deputies will seek assault charges against the first youth and gun and drug possession charges against the other boy.

A week earlier, on Jan. 26, a 14-year-old girl allegedly used an ice pick to stab and slightly injure another 14-year-old girl in a fight over a boyfriend at Palmdale High School. The first girl later surrendered, and her attorney said she acted in self-defense and used another object, not an ice pick.

School Crime Crime incidents reported in the Antelope Valley Union High School District by school year:

% change Category 1989-90 1990-91 1991-92 1990-92 Weapons possession (Guns, knives, other) 33 41 87 +163% Drug offenses 59 116 118 +100% Assaults, battery 59 107 63 +7% Unlawful fighting 181 344 546 +202% TOTAL INCIDENTS 396 834 1,018 +157%

Source: Antelope Valley Union High School District crime reports