The Looting of Our Schools : Burglary, Vandalism Toll in ‘92: $6.5 Million

JoAnn Eriksson said the first thing that came to mind when she walked into her classroom and saw the destruction left behind by vandals was: “This was the work of animals.”

The special-education teacher at Normandie Avenue Elementary School said vandals ripped apart a child-size wheelchair and poured glue on it and on a pile of toys, games and report cards.

Other teachers at the school, which has been broken into 35 times since April, 1992, say vandals have sprayed their rooms with fire extinguishers, cut fan cords, ripped up books and maps, scribbled profanity on walls and walked away with $40,000 worth of goods. Some teachers even have found human excrement in their rooms.

“What’s so hard to understand is the meanness of it all,” teacher Kim Scherieble said. “People just don’t have respect for anything anymore, and it’s sad when it happens to children.”

Although the crime spree at Normandie Avenue Elementary in South-Central is a far worse case than usual, vandals and burglars break into a Los Angeles school almost nightly--sometimes to steal expensive equipment, other times to vandalize or destroy property. Ironically, district officials say, most of the perpetrators are youngsters.

In 1992, burglars broke into Los Angeles Unified school campuses 2,497 times--stealing almost $2 million in equipment and supplies. Vandals struck 3,107 times, causing $4.5 million in damage.

Combined, that loss is equivalent to the purchase price of a fleet of 65 top-of-the-line school buses.

The district, which is self-insured, used to tap into a special fund to replace stolen or lost items. But the fund was discontinued during the 1991-92 school year because of budget cuts.

As a result, most schools are not replacing missing, broken or stolen items. And although the district’s maintenance crews are sent out to repair broken windows or paint over graffiti, workers have trouble keeping up with the damage.

“How would you like to come to your office, see everything turned upside down, and not be able to get anything replaced--especially after you spent your own money to buy the supplies?” said Michael Popovac, a teacher at Normandie Avenue School. “There’s a real clear sentiment among teachers that the district should be taking care of this.”

What’s most frustrating about these multimillion-dollar problems, school officials say, is that there is little they can do to prevent them. Only about half of the 800 campuses in the district are fully alarmed, and the district can’t afford to beef up security, said Larry Hutchens, the school district’s deputy police chief.

Only one of the three buildings at Normandie Avenue School, for instance, has an alarm system. A security fence surrounds the school, but it does little to deter vandals and burglars.

“The booster club is trying to raise money for an alarm system,” principal Charles Proctor said. “But for now, all we can do is store our computers and equipment or take them home.”

Schools appear to be a popular target of vandals and burglars, partly because of the relative ease of entry and the availability of portable and easily sold items such as computers, videocassette recorders and televisions, police said. Oftentimes, vandals enter when schools are dark and simply break a window, lock or door to gain entry into classrooms, school officials say.

“We’re trying to do a number of things to make schools difficult to break into,” Hutchens said. “We’re making sure all keys are accounted for, we’re responding to incidents as quickly as we can, and we’re encouraging principals to increase awareness about the problem in their communities.”

The district employs 296 of its own police officers--most of whom work during school hours. District police officials declined to say how many officers work overnight and on weekends, fearing that such information might encourage criminals. But principals said only a few officers work the off-hour shifts, and they have hundreds of schools to patrol.

“Obviously, if the district were not in the financial shape it’s in, we would move to have the police force expanded,” said Herbert Graham, the district’s director of police and administrative services. “But since we are having budget problems, we have to do the best with what we have.”

School police say the break-ins are not limited to schools in high-crime areas. Vandals strike buildings throughout the district. But administrators at several Central Los Angeles schools say their problems have escalated in recent years.

About two years ago, vandals broke into Wilshire Crest Elementary School over Memorial Day weekend and turned on an emergency water hose.

“It ran the whole three-day weekend and destroyed all of the books in the library,” principal Beverly Tietjen said. “We ordered $50,000 of new books, but with the budget cuts, we had to cancel the order.”

Today, the library’s shelves are still empty.

And crime continues to plague the school.

Since the fall, the Mid-Wilshire school has been broken into six times and has lost eight computers and printers, eight videocassette recorders, three television sets, three microwave ovens and several decoders for deaf students, Tietjen said.

Boards have been nailed over several windows for up to several weeks at a time, and children often spend hours sitting in the school cafeteria or running around the playground while maintenance workers clean up their vandalized classrooms.

Wilshire Crest special-education teacher Judi Welch couldn’t help but shake her head as she looked around her classroom, which had been broken into the night before. Toys, books and bottles of food were heaped on the floor, along with the earthquake survival kits her students had been storing in plastic bags.

The hardest part about being vandalized, Welch said, is breaking the news to her students, all of whom are physically handicapped and one of whom is a victim of a drive-by shooting.

“A lot of my kids are used to trauma, but a couple of them were scared and wanted to know if (the vandals) were going to come back while they’re at school,” Welch said.

In the classroom next door, 7-year-old Roberto Flores said he has been sharing his crayons with a friend because hers were stolen. “It makes me sad,” he said. “They took all the good stuff we had so much fun with.”

Teachers say the situation is particularly tragic because children often are the culprits. Although the district does not keep figures, police officials say the vast majority of school break-ins are committed by juveniles.

Students and former students often will destroy school property if they are angry at a teacher or administrator, hold a grudge against the school or if they receive a bad grade, police said. Sometimes, students will break into schools on a dare or simply for fun.

“The community is wrecking the community,” said Popovac, the teacher at Normandie Avenue School. “It’s very perverse.”

School board member Mark Slavkin said he believes the root cause of the problem is a breakdown of basic values. “Kids are not growing up in homes with strong parental involvement,” he said. “When parents instill basic values in their kids, it’s unlikely that their kids are going to climb a fence and vandalize a school.”

In an attempt to deter children from vandalism, district officials have established a program that encourages elementary school students to take pride in their schools through skits and activities.

“Not many kids will burglarize their own homes, so (program officials) try to get them to buy into the theory that this is their school,” Hutchens said. “I think it’s been very well-received, but I don’t know how effective it’s been because it’s not like they can spend a lot of time at every school.”

Parents, teachers and administrators throughout the district are trying to protect school property but are finding that they have few options. Some teachers store their valuables in vaulted rooms, and others take supplies home with them. Others simply lock their doors at the end of the day and pray for the best.

Clara Holmes, whose son attends Normandie Avenue School, said she has been passing out flyers in her neighborhood, encouraging residents to call the district’s police department if they notice anything suspicious at the school.

“Parents feel helpless,” Holmes said. “Some people want to patrol the schools, but the security officers said it might not be safe because no one knows if these people are armed. What I don’t understand is why they’re picking on the schools. Schools used to be as sacred as a church building.”

Last year, after San Pedro High School was struck twice by vandals and once by an arsonist, parents and other community members helped raise money to buy an alarm system for the school and also began a neighborhood surveillance program.

“This seems to have curtailed the problem,” principal Joseph Viola said. “But I’m knocking on wood while I’m talking to you.”

Normandie Avenue’s booster club also is trying to buy the school an alarm system but is having trouble raising the money. Teachers says this is why inner-city schools often have more trouble curbing their burglary and vandalism than do schools in the Valley or on the Westside.

Although the school police department does not keep track of the number of arrests it has made for each type of crime, principals say most who have broken into their schools have not been caught.

Police say it’s often difficult to catch school burglars and vandals because many break-ins are not discovered until the next morning or after a weekend. By that time, the tracks of intruders are cold. Police often have to rely on friends or family members to turn in the vandals.

In May, 1991, after vandals ransacked Colfax Avenue Elementary School in North Hollywood, a woman told police that her 12-year-old son and 14-year-old daughter were responsible for the $27,000 in damage. The two youths, along with another 12-year-old boy, apparently went on the vandalism spree because one of the boys thought he had been treated unfairly by teachers there, police said.

Juveniles caught breaking into a school are taken into custody by district police and then released to their parents. Although parents are accountable for any damage their children may have done to school property, schools rarely are fully or quickly compensated.

“When the court holds a parent responsible, many times the parent can only afford to pay in monthly installments,” Hutchens said. “So if they owe $5,000, it takes a long time to get it back.”

After principal Lois Beaubian discussed a rash of burglaries at Saturn Street School on a recent Friday afternoon, she called Monday morning with more bad news: “Well, we’ve been broken into again over the weekend,” she said.

This time, burglars broke into the school’s main office and stole a fax machine, a desktop copier, a portable cassette player and a box of test scores. During six other recent break-ins, the Mid-Wilshire school lost four new videocassette recorders and television sets, several computers, a musical keyboard and other electronic products.

“I’m so disgusted with this,” Beaubian said as she looked at the broken glass on the floor. “In the last two weeks, they’ve been in four times. And I’ve been here a year and a half, and they haven’t caught anyone.”

Beaubian blames the rash of break-ins on high unemployment and gangs. Like many other schools in the district, Saturn Street has no alarm system and was not built to keep out burglars.

“They just pop this sucker out and take what they want,” Beaubian said, knocking on a plexiglass window at the school’s main entrance. “This is the way we live.”

The Toll on Schools

Although high schools make up only 6.8% of the districts facilities, they account for almost one-third of the crimes reported from July through December, 1992, the latest period for which statistics are available. The crimes reported only include vandalism, burglaries and thefts. The self-insured district no longer has a fund to replace stolen or lost items.

SCHOOL FACILITIES Elementaries: 419 (58.1%) Junior High: 72 (10.0%) High Schools: 49 (6.8%) Other facilities: 181 (25.1%)

CRIMES REPORTED BY LOCATION Elementaries: 1,231 (36.7%) Junior High: 795 (23.7%) High Schools: 974 (29.0%) Other facilities: 354 (10.6%)

ROBBERIES July-Dec. 1990: 217 Jan.-June 1991: 258 July-Dec. 1991: 224 Jan.-June 1992: 209 July-Dec. 1992: 206

BURGLARIES Losses in thousands of dollars July-Dec. 1990: 907 Jan.-June 1991: 1,259 July-Dec. 1991: 1,182 Jan.-June 1992: 1,323 July-Dec. 1992: 1,174

THEFTS Losses in thousands of dollars July-Dec. 1990: 870 Jan.-June 1991: 1,099 July-Dec. 1991: 1,021 Jan.-June 1992: 900 July-Dec. 1992: 803

VANDALISM Losses in thousands of dollars July-Dec. 1990: 1,172 Jan.-June 1991: 1,978 July-Dec. 1991: 1,608 Jan.-June 1992: 1,730 July-Dec. 1992: 1,377 Source: Los Angeles Unified School District