Security Increases on Conejo Campuses

Sheriff’s deputies and campus security guards will be posted at schools in the Conejo Valley Unified School District today to ensure student safety on the anniversary of the Columbine High School shooting, authorities said.

In addition to plainclothes security guards, one deputy will be posted at Thousand Oaks and Westlake high schools, Ventura County Sheriff’s Department spokesman Eric Nishimoto said.

“The big concern is the possibility of hoaxes,” Nishimoto said. “We had a lot of those types of calls after the Columbine incident. The extra presence will hopefully quell that possibility and that risk.”

Conejo Valley schools chief Jerry Gross said the extra security is particularly important in light of a bomb threat made to five schools last month.

“We don’t want to make a mountain out of a molehill here,” he said. “But we certainly are on alert.”

Officials in the Ventura and Oxnard school districts said they have no plans to increase security and no countywide plan has been activated, a representative for the county superintendent’s office said.

Gross met with about 60 school administrators this week to discuss the investigation of the bomb threat and the increased security. No arrests have been made in connection with an anonymous letter sent to four elementary schools and one middle school on March 29 threatening an explosion.

Nothing was found during sweeps of the schools and none of the schools were evacuated. Attendance, however, was down 75% the day after the district received copies of the letter.

On April 20, 1999, two students at Columbine High School in Littleton, Colo., opened fire on their classmates and tossed pipe bombs into school rooms, killing 13 and injuring 25 others before killing themselves.