Parents Assured Students Safe from Criminals

By Oliver Lukacs
Staff Writer

Jan. 19 -- After receiving a call from their child’s elementary school that a criminal is loose in the neighborhood, more than 400 parents frantically flood the campus demanding to know the whereabouts of their kids, sending an already chaotic situation spiraling into total pandemonium.

That was the nightmare scenario School District officials wanted to avoid in December, when an armed man wanted in connection to a burglary a block from Edison Elementary was reported on the run, district officials said last week.

And that’s why the district decided not to notify the parents, the school’s principal told a group of parents at a special meeting organized last week in reaction to the incident.

Sharing the paper-mâché-decorated stage in the elementary school cafeteria Tuesday, a special panel composed of top-ranking school district officials, police brass and Pico Neighborhood representatives also delved into the details of the school’s immediate response to the incident, as well as to another incident in late November involving a man who entered the campus after being shot at.

Concerned for their children’s safety, 30 to 40 parents, some accompanied by their elementary school students, wanted to know about the events of those days, which had never been fully explained, and what preventive measures were being taken to avoid similar incidents in the future.

In the central incident – which took place on December 5 around noon -- police cordoned off Virginia Avenue between Cloverfield Boulevard and 27th Street to conduct an extensive search for an armed suspect wanted in connection to a burglary on the1900 block of High Place, a block from Edison Elementary.

The elementary school immediately instituted a lock-down, a standard operation in a “vicinity” protocol, as the police swiftly set up a larger perimeter to secure the area in case the gunman, who was never found, was still lurking in the neighborhood.

It was a “text-book” response, said Lt. P.J. Guido, of the Santa Monica Police Department. The police responded within 12 to 13 seconds, Guido said.

“It was immediate. Everything was done exactly perfect,” he said.

The lockdown was one of two kinds of safety protocols for public schools in such situations -- a “vicinity” protocol for incidents that happen off school property but in the vicinity, and a “campus” protocol when the suspect is physically on the campus, said SMMUSD Supt. John Deasy.

“We’ve never had to trigger a campus event, thank God,” said Deasy, who added that similar vicinity lock-downs have occurred in John Adams Middle School, Will Rogers Elementary, and Samohi, all without incident.

There was one incident when a suspected gunmen got one foot onto the Samohi campus, Deasy said, but was immediately apprehended by the police.

“I was just amazed at the organization of the police, and how well that was taken care of,” Deasy said.

In the second incident – which took place November 25, roughly 10 minutes before 3 p.m, -- police responded to a report of a shot fired on the 2300 block of Virginia Avenue, near the park one street from the elementary school.

The police found the victim -- who claimed he was chased and fired at once by two other young Black men -- inside Edison Elementary uninjured. The suspected gunmen had fled and was never apprehended.

In the notice from the school informing them of the incident, parents were not told that the person who entered the campus in November was on the run from an aborted shooting.

Robert J. Lopez, a parent of two Edison elementary students, complained about the communication breakdown that led to the omission of that detail.

“Can you explain why no one knew that there was a shooting right next to the campus, and that they might be on the campus?”

The fact that a shot was actually fired is still unknown to this day, replied Lt. Guido.

“We did not know if it was a real gun, a cap gun, or a b.b. gun, and we didn’t recover a shell,” Guido said. “So to this day we still don’t know if a shot was fired.”

Lopez said the police should “err on the side of caution” and instruct the school to activate a lockdown whether it is confirmed or not that an actual shot was fired.

Ever since the Columbine shootings, the lock-down procedure is practiced with the same regularity as earthquake and fire drills, Deasy said.

“Are we prepared should something like that happen here,” said Lt. Guido referring to a Columbine-like shooting, “I’m here to tell you, ‘Yes we are.’”

Were a Columbine-type scenario to unfold in a Santa Monica school, a “barricade situation” would follow where the police would dispatch a Special Enforcement Team into the locked-down area, Guido said.

“It’s nothing to be afraid of, this is something we should be proud of,” said Guido. “It’s very different from what you see on TV shows. We approach the situation with the utmost safety.”

Allaying the fears of the alarmed parents, Guido said, “You have a better chance of being injured in a traffic accident than in a shooting in Santa Monica, and in fact anywhere else… You are in a community that is safer today than in 1963.”

Santa Monica, Guido added, has “the lowest crime rate in my lifetime.”

But the panelists all agreed that the two incidents are symptoms of a much larger problem of gang-violence plaguing the Pico Neighborhood, which is home to only one district school in the area -- Edison Elementary.

“What I would like to see is a neighborhood that doesn’t accept it,” Guido said. “Gang members are terrorists. Gang members create a sense of terror, and gang members have to be stopped,” he said, adding that police are doing everything they can to “destroy” and “crush” gangs in the City.

“I don’t want to crush them, I want to help fix them,” said Gina DeBaca, who helps at-risk youths rehabilitate their lives at the Pico Youth and Family Center.

The founder of that center, Oscar de la Torre, who is also a School Board member, said the “crush them” mentality is the basis of a “culture of punishment” responsible for the perpetuation of the violence police are trying to stop.

Since gangs are a phenomenon of youth and young people “learn how to become gang members when they go to prison,” de la Torre said the City and the community must forge a partnership to prevent youth from entering the system in the first place.

“This is not a Pico Neighborhood issue, or a youth issue, or an issue of color,” de la Torre said, adding that it is an issue that affects the entire community.

“Fortunately (the violence) didn’t spill over into the school” this time, de la Torre said, but “those bullets don’t have names, and the young men who are doing the shooting are not good shots.