El Camino Real Increases Its Security for Playoff Game

El Camino Real High School has nearly tripled its contingent of school police for Wednesday night’s football playoff game against Monroe High School, partly in response to last weekend’s fatal shooting after another Monroe football game, officials said Monday.

At Sylmar High School, officials have asked for police escorts for opposing team buses after a recent rock-throwing incident.

But those are the only two Valley schools that have taken special precautions in anticipation of the heavy playoff schedule. Athletic directors from 14 other Los Angeles Unified School District campuses, who met Monday, foresee no special problems and have taken no extraordinary measures this week.

El Camino Real will have eight Los Angeles Unified School District police officers on hand and, following a customary practice, will search fans with metal detectors. Last week, the school had three school police officers at its game against Roosevelt High School.

Wednesday’s playoff contest is being played at Canoga Park High School’s stadium, which has lights and serves as a home-away-from-home for El Camino Real night games. El Camino Real’s field has no lights.

“We hired extra police partly because of what had happened at Monroe last Friday, even though there’s nothing that points out it had anything to do with the game itself,” said Larry Markle, one of El Camino Real’s assistant principals.

Markle noted that the extra police also have been added because the game is a playoff and could attract a crowd of 1,000 or more fans. As the home team, El Camino Real is responsible for providing security.

“Because it’s the second-round playoff game and a night game, I expect we would have had to go with six or even seven police officers on the off chance that we will have a large crowd,” Markle said.

Although up to eight school officers often work the night games at Canoga Park, El Camino Real specifically requested the additional manpower for this playoff game.

Meanwhile, Sylmar High is pursuing security arrangements for its own playoff game Wednesday night against Franklin High School following recent rock-throwing incidents near the East Valley campus.

Rocks were thrown at a bus carrying the Canoga Park High School band last week about two blocks from school after a playoff game. Earlier in the football season, rocks also were thrown at a bus carrying the Poly High School football team about four blocks from that campus. No one was injured in either incident.

Sylmar Principal Linda Calvo said that LAUSD police will escort the Franklin team from the campus to nearby freeways after Wednesday’s game.

Despite the recent troubles at Monroe and Sylmar, athletic directors, school administrators and campus police expressed little concern about violence at upcoming playoff games.

The 16 athletic directors from schools involved in the playoffs met Monday to discuss security and other playoff issues. They said their campuses were sticking with ordinary precautions for playoff games--increasing the numbers of police to handle larger crowds and using metal detectors--but not taking any other extraordinary measures.

Some of the athletic directors hadn’t even heard about the Monroe shooting Friday night, in which 15-year-old Ricky Evans was killed in a drive-by shooting near the campus after Monroe beat Crenshaw High School by one point.

LAUSD Police Chief Wesley Mitchell said that no shootings have occurred at football games this year, and he reported only minor disturbances such as drunk spectators and fans sneaking into games without paying.

“It’s been an awfully quiet year, leading into last week,” Mitchell said. “Last week kind of went south for us.”

The Banning-Westchester playoff game at Westchester will have the largest number of LAUSD police--14--of the eight games Wednesday. The Taft-Palisades contest in Woodland Hills will have 10 officers. The Chatsworth-Garfield match in East Los Angeles will have six officers, the smallest of any playoff game, school officials say.

Monroe school officials said they believed the shooting of Evans, a sophomore at Monroe, was not related to the football game.

“The last we heard, it was a random drive-by shooting,” said Monroe Principal Joan Elam.

Elam said the school took precautions to ensure a safe game, staffing the stadium with six LAUSD police officers, four officers from the Los Angeles Police Department’s Devonshire Division and 25 adults. Administrators remained on campus until every student was picked up or heading home, she said.

“The game was very peaceful,” Elam said. “It’s just unfortunate that we have no control over the streets.” LAPD investigators said they have no proof yet to suggest that the shooting was related to the game.

“We have no idea what caused the shooting,” said Det. Al Aldaz of the Devonshire Division.