LAUSD POLICE DEBATE RAGES
School safety: Some say police presence on campus deters threats, but others focus on other methods
This week's mass shooting at an elementary school in Uvalde, Texas, again has stirred debate about the merit of having officers on campus and whether a police presence would help deter a similar incident from occurring in Los Angeles.
L.A. Unified School District School Board President Kelly Gonez said Wednesday, one day after the tragedy in Texas, that she had spoken with the district's school police chief to ensure any threats are dealt with quickly and that patrols are increased this week.
Gonez and some board members voted to cut the school police department's budget two years ago and remove officers from campuses amid a nationwide call for police reform following the death of George Floyd. She said Wednesday that having officers on campus is not the only solution to school safety and stressed the need for federal gun control.
“At L.A. Unified, we are doing everything we can to ensure our students and staff are safe at school, from proactive mental health supports to secure entrances to school police patrols,” she said in a statement. “But preventing these incidents in the future hinges on immediate federal action to restrict access to guns, especially automatic weapons, that bring senseless violence to our communities. We are fortunate that California is a state that takes gun control seriously, but it's not enough to prevent guns from crossing state lines and proliferating in our communities.”
One of Gonez's opponent in next month's District 6 school board race, Jess Arana, is a sergeant in the Los Angeles School Police Department who has made campus safety a campaign priority.
Arana agreed with Gonez that mental health services and gun control are part of the solution to preventing further school violence. However, he said having officers around is also part of the answer and that defunding school police is a political move to appeal to special interest groups such as Black Lives Matter and United Teachers Los Angeles, the union that represents
LAUSD teachers.
“I hope that our politicians stop putting politics in front of the safety of our children. The No. 1 priority should be the safety of kids at school,” he said.
Officer Gil Gamez, the president of the union that represents rank-andfile LASPD officers, said in an interview that the district's schools are “grossly ill prepared” to respond to an incident such as a mass
school shooting.
Meanwhile, Superintendent Alberto Carvalho announced Wednesday that the district would expand its safety procedures, communications protocols and investments in technology to enhance campus safety.
“Los Angeles Unified has implemented numerous safety measures in our school communities,” Carvalho said in a statement. “However, as part of the ongoing review of our practices and procedures, we must continue to assess and update safety protocols
in order to keep our students, employees and families as safe as possible.”
Among those, the district will conduct an assessment to reduce the number of points of entry to get onto campuses, explore using mobile applications with GPS to help first responders navigate their way on campuses, improve collaboration with local first responder agencies to share campus maps and other critical information, and swiftly exchange information with the first responder agencies.
Additionally, the district will evaluate its systems to provide enhanced mental health services to those on campus and will consider reducing its student-counselor ratio.
The budget cuts to the department two years ago led to a reduction in officers, and since then, about 100 additional officers have left, Gamez said. Because the remaining officers are no longer located on campuses, the normal response time has increased, he said.
“Our response time is from 10 minutes to 20
minutes because we do not have enough police officers,” he said. “When our officers were assigned to the campuses, they were there. And they knew the campus layout. They had the tools to run to where an incident was happening within minutes.”
Gamez said the department in the past conducted simulation training to respond to mock scenarios of school threats, but that training stopped following the budget cuts. But some schools have held professional development workshops in which staff
watch a PowerPoint prepared by school police, he said.
There are no simulated active shooter drills involving students or staff at LAUSD, he said. A debate is underway around the country about the merit of exposing students to active shooter drills, with some believing it can cause psychological harm.
Neither the school district nor LASPD responded to questions about Gamez's characterization that schools are not prepared to handle a major threat to their campuses.