Deputies to Join Schools’ Anti-Crime Effort

In an unusual effort to head off campus violence, several Orange County law enforcement agencies will for the first time begin gathering and sharing intelligence on problem students in county schools.

Beginning this spring, sheriff’s deputies assigned to schools will catalog threats and other unruly behavior, like schoolyard brawls and gang membership, even if they fall short of criminal behavior.

Deputies will pass on the information to a team of investigators, psychologists and counselors handpicked to spot signs that students may be prone to violence.

The county’s plans come as school districts across the country tighten security in the wake of campus shootings over the last few years, including the mass killings at Columbine High School in Colorado.

But officials said Orange County’s effort goes a step further by monitoring student misbehavior and responding to seemingly routine campus confrontations in an effort to prevent feuds from escalating.

The approach, though still uncommon, is gaining popularity among police and school districts around the country.

“Columbine told us . . . if we had taken the threat assessment seriously, it could have been avoided,” said Assistant Sheriff George Jaramillo. “This program goes beyond standard enforcement . . . [and] looks at fixing the problem.”

But privacy-rights advocates expressed alarm at the effort, saying authorities are going too far in plans to compile data on law-abiding youngsters.

“We have to be extraordinarily careful not to deprive kids of their rights just because they are kids,” said Elizabeth Schroeder, associate director of the ACLU of Southern California. “We are intruding into the lives of kids in a way that no grown-up would stand for.”

Schroeder said that although the ACLU supports efforts to address crimes on campus, officials in Orange County and elsewhere are setting a troubling precedent by aggressively keeping tabs on noncriminal behavior.

In the wake of Columbine and other campus shootings, schools across the country have spent vast sums on security measures, from high-tech features such as metal detectors and security cameras to psychological surveys for students. Children are encouraged to call anonymous hotlines with tips about threats. And the FBI released a report listing dozens of behavioral problems that teachers should watch for as telltale signs of potential violence.

Orange County joins a small but growing number of communities that have adopted a more aggressive strategy.

In Florida, New Hampshire and other states, police and schools have started tracking and sharing information about students who repeatedly cause trouble, particularly those with criminal histories, said Ronald D. Stephens, a campus security expert and executive director of the National School Safety Center.

Such programs, he said, are based on the theory that teachers, parents and police might have prevented school shootings had a pattern of misbehavior not gone unnoticed or ignored. Had authorities been working together, they might have realized that students needed intervention or counseling before it was too late.

“For the most part, agencies that were dealing with [these students] were not communicating among themselves, and the children were treated as first-time offenders,” Stephens said.

The Orange County project, led by Sheriff Mike Carona, is the product of more than a year of sometimes tough negotiations between law enforcement and school district officials. Although school trustees said they were unaware of the proposal’s details, Crystal Kochendorfer, president of the Capistrano Unified School District board, said she supports the Sheriff’s Department’s efforts to collaborate with schools to monitor problem students.

“I favor law enforcement helping those kids that need help and in keeping kids safe from violence,” she said.

Law enforcement officials plan to spend up to $4 million and assign deputies to every high school within the South Orange County patrol area. Campus deputies will also be responsible for elementary and middle schools that feed into the high schools.

Activities Outside School Also Monitored

In addition to monitoring behavior on campus, the deputies will share information from encounters outside of school, Jaramillo said. If students are caught drinking or are belligerent toward a deputy after classes, for example, campus deputies and other investigators will be alerted.

Sheriff’s officials maintain that their work will not violate students’ rights. Deputies will not simply “target” campus outcasts or students wearing what they consider unconventional dress, like trench coats or tongue studs. Instead, officials said, deputies will share information they learn about troublemakers in the course of their work.

Such sharing, they said, is essential if authorities are to recognize that a student may pose a danger to others or might need intervention, such as drug treatment or anger management.

“It’s not Big Brother out there,” Jaramillo said. “It’s police officers with a new focus, a new method of taking information that’s already out there for them and centralizing it and assessing it.”

Sheriff’s deputies assigned to schools will also work closely with a team of probation officers and other deputies zeroing in on problem students and assessing threats of violence on campus.

The team will target campuses within the Sheriff’s Department’s patrol area, most of which belong to the Capistrano Unified and Saddleback Valley Unified school districts.

The two districts post low rates of campus crime, with Capistrano reporting 360 total offenses and Saddleback 180 during the school year ending in 1999, according to the California Department of Education.

But backers of the county’s plans said a few high-profile threats at Orange County schools in recent years supports the need for a threat assessment team.

A year ago, a Fullerton student was arrested on suspicion of threatening to kill classmates and drawing up an elaborate plan to stage a Columbine-style massacre. Months earlier, two Anaheim boys were arrested on suspicion of making bomb threats over the Internet.

And within days of the 1999 Columbine shooting, in which 14 students and one teacher died, Orange County sheriff’s deputies were dispatched to quell rumors predicting a similar rampage at Capistrano Valley High School.

“We’ve seen so many incidents in several years . . . whether they be from violent groups of kids or individual kids experimenting with bombs or gangs,” said Colleene Preciado, Orange County chief deputy probation officer. “We need a team of law enforcement people to evaluate the threat and then get the kid help.”

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Times staff writer Tina Borgatta contributed to this report.