O.C. Deputies, Psychologists Join to Fight School Crime

In an unusual effort to head off school violence, several Orange County law enforcement agencies plan to gather and share intelligence on problem students in South County and other areas patrolled by the Sheriff’s Department.

Beginning this spring, after the expected approvals are granted, sheriff’s deputies assigned to high schools will catalog threats and other disturbing behavior, such as schoolyard brawls and gang membership, even if they fall short of criminal acts.

Deputies will pass on the information to a team of investigators, psychologists and counselors handpicked to spot warning 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 killing 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, although 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 over the effort, saying authorities are going too far with plans to compile data on even 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 crime 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 metal detectors and security cameras to psychological surveys. Students are encouraged to call hotlines with anonymous 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.

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.

In Orange County, deputies assigned to schools will work with a team of probation, district attorney’s and sheriff’s investigators, along with one prosecutor, who will all zero in on problem students and assess threats of violence on campus. Some investigators will be gang specialists.

The project, spearheaded by Sheriff Mike Carona, results from sometimes tough negotiations over the last year between the Sheriff’s Department and school districts, officials said. While school trustees said they were unaware of the proposal’s details, Crystal Kochendorfer, president of the Capistrano Unified School District, 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 sheriff’s patrol area. Campus deputies also will be responsible for elementary and middle schools that feed the high schools.

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, however, maintain that their work will not violate students’ rights. Deputies will not target campus outcasts or students wearing what they consider unconventional dress, such as 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.”

Most of the sheriff’s patrol area lies within the Capistrano Unified and Saddleback Valley Unified school districts.

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

But supporters of the county’s plans said a recent handful of high-profile threats in Orange County schools underscores the need for a threat assessment team.

A year ago, a Fullerton student was arrested for 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 rampage, in which 14 students and one teacher were killed, Orange County 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.”

County supervisors last month signed off on part of the plan, and the rest of the proposal is expected to win approval from the state Board of Corrections this month. Sheriff’s officials hope to start the program by April.

The department will create a juvenile bureau overseeing the work of the campus deputies. The bureau will also include a group of nonpaid reserves who work as psychologists in their regular jobs. Working with counselors, these reserves will help single out students needing intervention.

Officials will also assign four sheriff’s investigators to handle nothing but juvenile crime on and off campus. Students identified by investigators as habitual truants or substance abusers will be offered diversion programs, officials said.

“Nothing is more important than protecting our kids and making sure that they have the best chance of success,” Jaramillo said. “That goes beyond arresting them.”

Times staff writer Tina Borgatta contributed to this report.