Teens express fears of school violence

Jace Radke

Tuesday, Feb. 29, 2000 | 11:22 a.m.

Students took about 30 minutes to open up to authorities, but once the dialogue began Monday night at Western High School, one emotion poured out -- fear.

When Clark County School District Police Sgt. Ken Young asked what the teens were frightened of, one replied, "The kids who bring knives and guns to school."

Filemon Larios said his son, Sam, 17, had the same fears before he was shot and killed on his way home from school Feb. 18.

"My son expressed to me he was scared, and almost ready to leave school," Larios said. "He told me he couldn't handle it. Now I see all these people that are scared, too."

About 50 parents, students and other residents joined Larios in Western's gymnasium Monday for what the hosts -- City Councilmen Lawrence Weekly and Michael McDonald -- called a teen town hall meeting.

Weekly said the meeting was called as a response to phone calls he was getting from students who were frightened by the shooting deaths of Larios near Washington Avenue and Decatur Boulevard and 15-year-old Christopher Gaitor two days later on Arville Street.

"The calls from the students alarmed me a little bit," Weekly said. "Councilman McDonald and I put this meeting together to listen to how students are feeling and find out what ideas or concerns they have about being safe at school and what the solutions are."

What Weekly heard from the teenagers were fears that he said he never had to deal with in his days as a student at Western in the early 1980s.

One student said she deals with drugs and weapons everyday at school.

"I'm scared when I go into fifth period, and there is someone high or drunk sitting next to me," the student said. "I don't want to get shot."

Others echoed her comments and asked the councilmen, Metro Police and School Police Chief Dan Reyes what was being done to keep them safe.

"We are fighting school violence by creating partnerships with Metro, governments and other entities to ensure safety," Reyes said. "Safety is a priority in this school district."

From those partnerships, such programs as "Z-squared" or Zero Weapons, Zero Tolerance were started. The national program aims at keeping guns out of schools by educating parents and students about gun safety.

Another program is Operation Crime Free Schools, which utilizes a 24-hour anonymous-tip line, 799-0228, so that students can give information to school police without fear of retribution, Reyes said.

Some said they wouldn't be willing to use the number for fear that someone would find out.

"From junior high up you learn real quick that if you say something they'll come get you," a student said. "It's not easy to tell police when you see something because you could end up dead, in the hospital, or they could do something to your family. They don't mess around."

When asked by McDonald if she thought metal detectors at schools and mandatory identification badges for students would make it safer, the student said yes. McDonald and Weekly said requests for those types of measures may need to be brought to the state Legislature.

"This environment that is being described is totally different from when I went to school," Weekly said. "From what I'm hearing, maybe this is something we'll have to take to the state Legislature to increase the peace so that kids aren't afraid to come to school and learn."

Larios said that if it resulted in better safety for children, he would hope that laws could be changed to allow any and all safety measures from metal detectors to searches of students.

"Everyone knows who these bad apples are," Larios said. "Are we afraid to face them? Do we allow them to continue to go into the schools and hurt our kids because there is no constitutional laws against it?

"If someone here tonight could change the laws to protect our kids, I ask them to."

Reyes said he believes in the prevention programs in place in the district and that the ideas of metal detectors, searching students and mandatory ID badges would need to be approved by the community before they could be implemented.

He points to safety statistics that show that the number of weapons found in schools has decreased.

"Back in 1991 we had 129,000 students and 132 reports of gun incidents at schools," Reyes said. "That was about one gun for every 1,000 students. Last year we had only 59 gun incidents with over 203,000 students. That's a reduction of about 75 percent."

In a symbolic effort at the end of the meeting, Larios and his wife broke off a piece of a 15-foot long plastic-foam wall with words such as "hate" and "anger" spray-painted on it. The wall represented a wall of silence that people face when they are afraid to report violent acts.

The crowd then filed out of the gym and held a short candlelight vigil for Sam Larios in front of the school. A couple hours earlier another candlelight vigil was held for Christopher Gaitor near where he was killed on Arville Street.

McDonald said he plans to hold another teen meeting at Clark High School in the next couple of weeks.