Armed officers urged for schools

By Emily Richmond

Wednesday, April 13, 2005 | 10:57 a.m.

Clark County's school police union and local labor leaders are pushing for armed officers to be mandatory at every middle and high school campus in Clark County.

Assembly Bill 408, sponsored by Assemblyman Jerry Claborn, D-Las Vegas, calls for school districts located in counties with populations of at least 400,000 to have two police officers at each high school and one police officer at each middle school.

The bill, which is slated for a committee hearing this morning, has the support of the Clark County School Police Officers Association and various labor groups, including the Nevada AFL-CIO.

The bill's authors originally included a provision that would require the county to set up a special account for depositing court-imposed fines of drivers who violate traffic laws in school zones. That money would have been earmarked for school districts' to support police services.

But Phil Gervasi, president of the school police officers union, said this morning the bill's supporters have agreed to drop that provision in exchange for Metro Police's support of AB 408.

Gervasi said Metro Police Lt. Stan Olsen, appearing in Carson City on behalf of the police department's governmental services office, was slated to testify this morning in favor of the bill.

While school police officers write tickets for traffic violations, the citations are handled by the local courts.

In Metro's jurisdiction, fees for all traffic violations are shared by the county's general fund, Las Vegas Justice Court and the state, said Margaret Barton, Las Vegas Justice Court manager. The largest share goes to the county followed by the state, Barton said.

In the past 15 months, a total of $172,000 in fines have been collected for traffic violations in school zones, Barton said.

Gervasi said the funding component was not critical to his organization's support of the bill.

In making the case for AB 408, Gervasi pointed to the recent high school shooting in Red Lake, Minn., where a teenager killed an unarmed security guard in order to gain entrance to the campus and went on to kill nine people.

"If they had armed security at the front door, who knows what might have happened," Gervasi said. "The Clark County School District is fortunate we haven't had the tragedies other communities have experienced. But that's because we've had school police officers at our schools."

All of the district's 35 comprehensive high schools have two officers assigned, Clark County School District Police spokesman Darnell Couthen said.

And 28 of the district's 48 middle schools have a school police officer assigned to the campus, Couthen said. Officers are also on duty at the district's two continuation middle schools for students with behavioral problems and chronic truants.

Of the 20 middle schools that do not have officers assigned to them, five are rural campuses: Sandy Valley, Indian Springs, Laughlin, Charles Hughes Middle School in Mesquite and Mack Lyon Middle School in Overton.

The metropolitan middle schools without campus officers are: Becker, Burkholder, Canarelli, Cram, Garrett, Greenspun, Hyde Park, Knudson, Lawrence, Bob Miller, Molasky, Rogich, Saville, Grant Sawyer and Thurman White.

Some middle school principals have chosen to staff their campuses with security monitors rather than a combination of monitors and one school police officer. But there are several middle school principals who said they have been on a waiting list for a campus cop and have been promised one as soon as staffing levels improve.

School police are sworn peace officers who carry guns and investigate most crimes. Security monitors, while receiving specialized training, are basically security guards and handle crowd control, operate metal detectors and watch the comings and goings on campus.

Clark County School District Police Chief Hector Garcia, who assumed his post in February, said he met with the district's security monitors last month to discuss their role on campus.

"Everything I've heard and witnessed firsthand has been very positive," Garcia said. "We're appreciative of all the assistance they're providing us."

At the same time, Garcia said he also supports AB 408. Garcia said his department's budget would not be able to cover the cost of the new hires, if qualified individuals were even available.

"It's a great idea if it's funded by the Legislature," Garcia said. "There are certain crime prevention programs and proactive activities that require the expertise of an officer on campus."

Canarelli Middle School Principal Kristy Keller said she agrees, and that's why she's been asking for more than year to have a school police officer added to the three security monitors assigned to the campus.

"We're like a little city here," Keller said of the school, which is over-capacity with nearly 2,000 students. "With that many bodies, we need a school police officer. It's not about dealing with dangers, it's about issues related to growth."

A 14-year-old Canarelli student was arrested last week after he brought an unloaded Beretta semi-automatic handgun to school in his backpack. Another student reported the situation to an administrator shortly before classes began at 8 a.m., Keller said.

The student was detained by administrators and a campus security monitor for the 90 minutes it took school police to arrive, Keller said.

The school district has 151 police officers and officials said they hope to add several more by August, when 11 new campuses will open.

"Our overall goal is to have at least one officer at every secondary school," Couthen said. "In the meantime we are working with the schools and campus monitors to provide a safe learning environment with the resources we have."

When hiring new officers the school district must compete with local municipalities, including the cities of Henderson and North Las Vegas, which use the same academy for training.

Jeff Hafen, director of support staff training and development for the district, said increasing responsibilities of security monitors is a sensible alternative when full-time peace officers are in short supply, not just in Nevada but nationwide.

The Clark County School District is spending $1.3 million in salary increases for its 280 campus security monitors, civilian personnel who are supposed to handle crowds, keep an eye out for trespassers and report crime to school police.

Gervasi said that money should be spent on actual police, rather than on civilian substitutes.

"They (campus security monitors) can't make arrests, they don't have the authority to follow through, they have to call us to take any real action," Gervasi said. "I feel like we're going back 20 years."

The campus security monitors are not intended to replace school police officers, district officials said. With the security monitors taking over less critical campus duties, school police officers have more time for patrols and investigative work, district officials said.

Campus monitors, represented by the support employees' bargaining group, were due for a pay hike, said Walt Rulffes, deputy superintendent of operations for the district. The decision was made to increase the responsibilities of the job along with the pay, promoting the former "campus" monitors to "security" status.

Security monitors' pay increased to $13.64 per hour from $9.93 per hour this year. With 280 monitors working 35-hour weeks, nine months a year, the annual cost of the pay hike is $1.3 million.

After spending $1.37 million on school police overtime costs in 2003, district officials began looking for ways to reduce the work load on officers without compromising student safety.

The decision was made to expand the role of campus monitors, who until then were largely responsible for directing student traffic between classes and writing up minor infractions of campus policy. "Rather than seeing it as a means of simply displacing police overtime it was a means of increasing security and personnel at large schools," Rulffes said. "They need more than one or two people to deal with the volume and velocity that comes forth."

School police must also be available for overnight shifts to patrol campuses and respond to alarms and emergencies, Rulffes said. Typically municipal law enforcement agencies, including Metro, rely on school police officers to deal with non-felony infractions such as trespassing on campuses, Rulffes said.

The cost of hiring a full-time school police officer ranges from $36,000 to $64,600 annually, depending on experience. By contrast pay for security monitors ranges from $17,187 to $20,904 for nine months work.

Valley High School Principal Ron Montoya, whose campus has two officers, said it shouldn't be a question of having to choose between campus cops and security monitors.

"You need armed officers at our schools as a preventative measure, it's just a fact of life in the world we're now living in," said Montoya, a 30-year veteran of the district. "But we also need our monitors, who do an outstanding job as those extra sets of eyes in our cafeterias, hallways and sporting events. Like anything else, it's a matter of teamwork."