The Price of Safer Schools

Tens of thousands of high-school-age gangsters and handfuls of unbalanced loners in Southern California have access to lethal weapons. And hundreds of thousands of innocent students have a right to be protected from them. But a lawsuit filed by the American Civil Liberties Union on Tuesday confuses potential victims with potential victimizers by challenging random weapons searches on Los Angeles Unified School District campuses.

Sure, searches with metal detectors inconvenience students, and a few have squawked. The ACLU has apparently heard from them. But how many more teenagers are too intimidated to stand up and confess that they appreciate the modicum of security the searches provide; that they’re a little better able to concentrate on math and biology because the kid at the next desk is a little less likely to have a Glock in his backpack.

The ACLU lawsuit accuses the school district and, specifically, Locke High School in South Los Angeles of violating students’ constitutional rights by subjecting them to unreasonable search.

The fact is, searches are conducted every school day at every public high school in the L.A. Unified School District. Done according to guidelines, the searches are truly random--school personnel may, for instance, pick any class without warning and search every student.

There is no excuse for a search that humiliates a student. Students should not be treated like criminals. But if a school is searching improperly, the problem can be fixed without the ACLU making a federal case of it.

If some students aren’t concerned that a misguided suit will diminish their safety, it may be because they’re too young to remember what inspired the searches. The year was 1993. Demetrius Rice, 16, was walking back to his seat in a morning English class at Fairfax High School. Another student was handling a .357 magnum in his backpack. The teacher said the shot seemed to come from nowhere. The bullet went through the chest of Eli Kogman, then hit Rice. Kogman would survive. Rice staggered, collapsed and died. At school.

In the wake of that atrocity, random screening began. The previous year 151 weapons were seized in Los Angeles Unified. In the 1999-2000 school year, the total was 43. The numbers say it all. Random searches must continue.