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Top L.A. Officials Pledge Unified Effort to Curb Campus Violence

Education: Central to plan is the creation of 'safe passage corridors,' including patrols of students' routes. Pilot programs will be launched at Dorsey High and Lennox Middle School.

January 11, 1994|STEPHANIE CHAVEZ, TIMES EDUCATION WRITER

In a strong show of unity, several of Los Angeles' highest-ranking police officials, educators and politicians pledged Monday to devise community plans with local officials to curb violence in and around campuses.

The cornerstone of the plans will be the creation of "safe passage corridors" in which police, community members and school officials will identify and patrol school routes to help ensure that young people are safe as they travel to and from campus.


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During a news conference at the Los Angeles Police Academy that was generally short on specifics, Los Angeles Police Chief Willie Williams, county Supervisor Yvonne Brathwaite Burke, Los Angeles Unified School District Supt. Sid Thompson and top deputies of Mayor Richard Riordan and county Sheriff Sherman Block said that making schools safe will be a priority in their departments in 1994.

"Every child in Los Angeles County should have a corridor of safe passage to school," Burke said. "We have a responsibility to say to every child: One place you are safe is school."

Pilot programs will be launched at Dorsey High School in Los Angeles and Lennox Middle School.

None of the officials, however, volunteered additional money or resources. They emphasized that just bringing disparate bureaucracies together was an important first step.

"Many of our children have to travel through neighborhoods and have to enter environments where death, destruction, guns, drugs and gang activity are part of their everyday routes to school," Williams said. "We are committed to trying to change that."

Dorsey High School Principal Jerelene Wells said that a series of such interagency meetings has led to a soon-to-be-realized crime deterrent at her school--a fence to keep intruders out.

School safety issues rank among the top concerns of parents and educators in the region. In the past year there have been two fatal shootings on Los Angeles high school campuses and numerous shootings, stabbings and brawls among students just outside school grounds. Countywide, about 1,000 students have been expelled for carrying weapons on campus in the last year.

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On the first day of school in September, a 15-year-old boy was shot and critically wounded at Dorsey High School. Last month, another boy was shot and wounded outside Chatsworth High School.

Capt. Norman L. Rouillier, commander of the Police Department's Southwest division, which includes Dorsey, said increased police presence before and after school has gone a long way to deter crime around campus since the September shooting.

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