Police to Patrol 4 Arcadia Schools in New, Get-Tough Policy : Crime: PACE 2000 program aims to eliminate weapons and drugs from the campuses within five years.

In the wake of a fight in January between Asian American and white teen-agers near Arcadia High School, police, parents and school officials have come up with a new get-tough policy to crack down on students involved in violence or drugs.

Called PACE 2000, for “Peaceful Arcadia Through Community Efforts 2000,” the program puts a police officer at the high school and three junior high schools, installs a 24-hour police hot line to report violence or drug use and promises to expel any student who brings a weapon to school, assaults another student or sells drugs. Its aim is to eliminate weapons and drugs at Arcadia’s public schools within five years.

While other school districts frequently expel students involved in campus assaults or drugs, Arcadia officials say PACE is different. It backs the program up, they say, with a constant police presence and its expulsion policy will leave students little room to wiggle out of trouble. The schools will also bring in the DARE (Drug Abuse Resistance Education) program to teach children about the dangers of drugs.

“Officers will be on campus for security and there will be a school resource officer to go into classes and educate kids about gangs in the region and aversion tactics,” said Arcadia Chief of Police Ronnie Garner. He said funding will come from a $150,000 federal grant and the state’s asset-seizure fund.

The program went into effect in March. A state law that went into effect in January, 1994, requires school districts to expel students for bringing a gun to school. But other offenses, such as drugs or fighting, are considered on an individual, case-by-case basis by most school districts, with suspensions often given as an admonishment for first-time offenders.

“It all depends upon the severity of the action,” said Lu Ayala, coordinator of student support services for Pasadena Unified School District. “Firearms are grounds for automatic expulsion, but everything else really depends on the situation.”

But in Arcadia, there will be no warnings and no exceptions, officials say. Arcadia will continue to provide expulsion hearings in which students are allowed the opportunity to present their side of the story, call witnesses and hire an attorney. But once students are found guilty, they are out of the district for as long as a year, regardless of their history or any unique circumstances they may have cited.

Student reaction to the new zero-tolerance policy was mixed. Of the 2,900 students recently polled by the Arcadia High School newspaper, about two-thirds were aware that it existed and of those, half were in favor of it, said Vincent Chiou, the paper’s editor.

“I support the policy, because why should a few bad apples ruin it for the rest of us?” said Chiou.

No one was seriously injured in the highly charged Arcadia conflict, which involved at least one youth from Temple City who was associated with an Asian gang called Red Eagle, said Arcadia Detective Ron Seman, as well as several Arcadia High students. But a gun was aimed at an assistant principal during the melee and five juveniles were arrested.

Racial tensions between whites and Asian Americans have been increasing in Arcadia in recent years, said Garner, as the community has seen large numbers of Asians move in. People of Asian descent make up nearly 25% of Arcadia’s population of 48,290, according to the 1990 U.S. Census.