Violent crimes in schools decrease

Jace Radke

Wednesday, July 19, 2000 | 10:49 a.m.

Reported incidents of violent crime and the number of weapons found at schools are down, while arrests are up according to statistics released by Clark County School District Police.

During the 1998-1999 school year there were 59 gun incidents and 162 reports of knives on campus, compared to 47 guns and 122 knives during the 1999-2000 school year. For the same two years, numbers of assaults also dropped from 58 to 45.

School District Police spokesman Sgt. Ken Young is cautiously optimistic about the statistics.

"I think we're seeing a stabilizing in the numbers more so than a decrease," Young said. "Over the next couple of years I think we'll really start to see if it is a true decrease."

A total of 86 knives were confiscated during the last school year, and of the 45 guns taken, 19 were BB or pellet guns.

School police made 159 more arrests last year than the year before as arrests rose from 1,235 to 1,394, Young said.

"I don't think there is any significant reason for the increase in arrests except that we have more students and more officers than we did last year," Young said. "With more of us out there we catch a few more things."

The nation's six-largest school district now has an official enrollment of 217,139, and 124 officers, up from 203,779 and 110 the year before.

Prevention and education have been the department's focus despite the increasing arrest numbers, Young said.

A 24-hour anonymous crime tip line, security cameras and such programs as Z-Squared or Zero Weapons, Zero Tolerance and DARE are among the prevention efforts.

"All of those programs are components we use, and every little bit helps," Young said.

School Board President Mary Beth Scow said she is happy with the job police are doing, and that prevention is the key to their work.

"It's good to have them in the position they're in because they really get to know the kids," Scow said. "They know what the kids are doing and have developed a dialogue that they can use to get the prevention message across."

While violent crimes were down according to police statistics the total number of calls that officers responded to was up from 8,663 to 9,179. Young attributes that increase to such things as false alarms, lewdness, vandalism, traffic violations, truancy and trespassing.

Other crime categories that saw slight increases included possession and sales of drugs and burglaries. Police report 497 cases of drug possession compared to 446 the year before, and 39 instances of drug dealing compared to 17. There were 644 reported burglaries last year versus 496 in 1998-1999.