New Partners : School Program Pairs Officers With At-Risk Children

For 10-year-old Daniel Lee, Santa Claus is dressed in dark blue, wears a badge and carries a gun.

Last week, his Santa, otherwise known as Los Angeles Police Officer Jim Rossum, noticed that Daniel’s right toe was sticking out of his tennis shoes. So Rossum bought Daniel a new pair of black high tops as an early Christmas present.

But this Santa wants something in return for his generosity--good behavior and better grades. To make sure that happens, Rossum tries to visit Daniel at school as often as he can.

All Daniel needs, said Rossum, who works out of the Wilshire Division, is “a friend, someone who cares.”

Whether as a police officer or St. Nick, Rossum is a friend who cares.

So are about 20 other police officers at the Wilshire Division who have “adopted” children who need extra attention at Marvin Elementary School in the Wilshire district.

“Daniel comes from the roughest part of the Wilshire area,” Rossum said. “A lot of these inner-city kids come from broken homes and are at risk of getting into gangs and drugs. We adopt them so we can take a stand in their lives and recruit them before the gangs and the drug dealers recruit them.”

The program began in spring as a joint effort between the police and the school to help students with special problems.

“The planning started last November when we were adopted by the Wilshire Division,” said Anna McLinn, principal at the 1,080-student school, which serves kindergartners through fifth-graders. “But we wanted to do more than just, ‘Hello, we are police officers.’ We were heavily affected by the riots. We wanted our youngsters to know that police are not the bad people just because of Rodney King. We also wanted the officers who don’t live in the area to know the plight of inner-city youths.”

The volunteer officers devote at least a couple hours a week to helping the youngsters at school and sometimes at home.

“I go through his homework, get him extra assignments, help him with math divisions and sentence structures,” said Officer Darcey McCall, who works with Jamal Adams, 10. “Next week we’ll play basketball together.

“We also talk about what’s going on at home,” she said. “He lives in a gang-infested area. We talk about what’s right and wrong. He’s become real receptive and responsible.”

As a reward for improvement, the officers plan to take the students horseback riding next semester.

The students say they love the extra attention they are getting from their uniformed pals and that their friends envy them for it.

“My friends say they want to be adopted by an officer, too,” Jamal said. “They ask us how do you get one?”

School officials say they pair the officers with students who have high suspension rates or behavior problems. Officers can look through a portfolio on the students and select who they want to help. Parents must give written permission for their children to participate in the program.

The principal says the youngsters just need extra attention to help them concentrate in class and interact peacefully with their peers. “We wanted to do something . . . so these youngsters would not have a track record (of bad behavior) following them to junior high school,” McLinn said.

Having a uniformed police officer suddenly appear in their lives was not an easy thing for the children to accept in the beginning.

“The first time I saw the officer I thought she was gonna take me to jail,” Jamal said. “I was scared. I saw the police beat up on a man once. But after she talked to me I thought she was nice.”

The only complaint Jamal has now is that his officer cannot visit him often enough. The organizers admit that there are more children in need of attention than there are officers to go around.

“The program doesn’t really cost anything . . . just the officer’s desire to commit time,” said Sgt. Ron Batesole, who works with an 8-year-old boy. However, Batesole said it is not easy to get volunteers for the program because “a lot of officers don’t live close to the community and everybody has their own things to do.”

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That is why children envy Daniel. Rossum tries to visit him every day during lunch. The officer said he picked the youngster because he knew he would need to spend extra time with him.

After a few months of one-on-one meetings at the school, the two interact like buddies. Rossum sometimes greets the shy youngster as “Big Daniel,” and gently pound fists with the boy in a gesture of friendship.

Daniel’s teacher, June Boyd, said “he’s turned around 100%.”

“I found out he’s very artistic,” Boyd said. “Before (being paired up with Rossum) I couldn’t tell what he was good at besides causing problems.”

Rossum, the father of three young children, says he particularly wants to see Daniel improve in school because he sees a lot of himself in the youngster.

“I’ve been there myself,” Rossum said. “I grew up in the inner city. I know how to relate to him.

“What we’re trying to accomplish is not going to take place overnight,” he said. “You just can’t enter a person’s life one day and not show up the next. Kids are very smart. They know when you’re real and when you’re not.”

Parent Janiet Leday says she appreciates what the officers are doing and the children. But she does not like the label “problem kids.”

“Nowadays we grow up early. It used to be 15 was the age of growing up. These kids survive anyway they can. But when you address them as problem kids they become problem kids.”

Some officers say they have volunteered their time and love to help ease these growing pains.

Officer Sharen Stallworth took the 11-year-old girl she works with home for Thanksgiving even though the girl graduated from Marvin in June. Stallworth continues to keep an eye on the girl and plans to invite her home for a week over Christmas.

“I try to tell a lot of these officers if you promise them something you got to do it,” Stallworth said. She kept her promise to take the girl to Raging Waters even though the officer broke her ankle after she made the promise.

“In their whole life they’ve been promised many things,” Stallworth said. “For example, when you’re a kid you’re supposed to have a mother and a father. But many of them don’t have that. When I’m around her she’s always hugging and holding my hand. All they need is a little attention and you see a big change.”