For the most part, police and school officials have succeeded in securing Chicago high schools. But as several recent gang-related incidents have shown, security beyond the school doors is a different and mounting concern.
Six teenagers were shot, one fatally, near four Chicago high schools in the first week of classes this year. All of the shootings took place between noon and 3 p.m., and in all of them, witnesses said, confrontations quickly escalated from words being exchanged and gang signs being flashed to weapons being drawn and shots fired.
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Police say so many shootings in one week is unusual, but they give several possible causes. September brings a change in schools for many students, which means they have to cross rival gang territory they formerly avoided. After a summerlong separation, enemies know they can find one another on or near school grounds. And the new school year is also a time for recruitment and promotions within street gangs.
Just a few years ago, the concern was preventing gunfire inside high schools. Today, thanks to a high-profile effort to secure schools, most students and teachers say they feel safe when they are on school grounds. Metal detectors, dress codes, security guards, uniformed police officers and alert teachers all enable school officials to monitor student activity in halls and classrooms, and most situations can be controlled before they become violent.
But outside the school buildings, some of which are located in very dangerous neighborhoods, it’s a different matter. School officials, who have their hands full keeping peace during the school day, say they cannot be responsible for activity off school grounds and after hours. And police find that preventing violence on streets surrounding schools is as difficult as preventing violence anywhere else.
“There are people shooting around here daily. Police can’t be everywhere at once,” said a senior at Bowen High School, 2710 E. 89th St. A gang-related drive-by shooting across the street from Bowen on Monday injured a 12-year-old boy and an 18-year-old man.
Students say rival gang members, usually from different schools, show up at the end of the school day, and confrontations can quickly escalate into violence.
“If the opposition comes out, dropping signs and disrespecting each other, you know there’s gonna be something,” the Bowen student said. All of the recent shootings involved students from more than one school.
When gang tensions are already high, as police say they have been for months in the neighborhood surrounding Bowen and Senn High School, 5900 N. Glenwood Ave., the scene of a double shooting Sept. 17, the likelihood of violence is even greater.
The beginning of the school year also presents problems, with kids coming together for the first time in months, say gang intervention workers and police. Some students enter schools for the first time; others transfer schools. Both may force teenagers to walk through enemy territory on a daily basis. Organization and recruiting are also more easily accomplished when kids are in the same place every day.
“We have people jockeying for position in the ranks within the school,” said Julio Matias, a worker with the Logan Square Street Intervention Program, which tries to defuse violence among area youth. “They want to be the person who is the most violent, the person you can’t mess with. It builds leadership within the structure and within the school itself.”
Police say they are responding to the problem. Two officers from the Chicago police school patrol unit are stationed in each of the city’s 67 high schools, and they move outside the buildings at dismissal time. They are joined by tactical police units for patrols after school, but even with the increased presence, they sometimes are unable to control violent situations once students leave the buildings.
“They’re fine in school, but when they leave they divide along gang lines,” said school patrol Officer Bob Frazin, who has worked at Roosevelt High School, 3436 W. Wilson Ave., for over three years. Roosevelt was the scene of a fatal shooting on Sept. 16, the first full day of classes.
Frazin and his partner, Officer Bob Sobieszczyk, patrol outside Roosevelt after dismissal, chatting with students but also urging them to leave the grounds. “It’s safer if you keep them moving,” Sobieszczyk said.
They agree the most dangerous zone is the perimeter of the school. On school grounds, Frazin and Sobieszczyk can arrest non-students for trespassing. But across the street, the most they can do is ask them to leave.
The unit’s commander, Lt. Thomas Byrne, says the school patrols provide invaluable assistance in keeping schools safe, and principals agree. School patrol officers have made almost 30,000 arrests and have confiscated more than 500 guns since the unit was created, Byrne said. Many students tip off the officers when trouble is brewing and also help solve crimes; arrests in three of the four recent shootings came in part because of student tips.
In spite of the high-profile shootings, Byrne said crimes and arrests within the schools are down. By Sept. 20, 1992, the unit had made 343 arrests, he said. With five fewer days of school this year, officers had made 110 arrests and had recovered three guns as of Monday. Byrne said there are no plans to change school-patrol practices.
“The system works well,” he said. “I wish we had numbers on the incidents that we’ve prevented.”
Nor do school administrators anticipate strengthening their measures. Most say their responsibility is to provide a safe environment within school walls, and criminal activity beyond the school grounds is a symptom of a larger societal problem.
“A school is only as strong as the community it’s in,” said Johnny Davis, assistant principal at Roosevelt. “We don’t want to be a distant part of the community. We want to be a community center, somewhere where people feel comfortable coming by.”
But like so many other communities, the Albany Park neighborhood where Roosevelt is located has been wracked with violence, the result of gang activity and easy access to guns.
“Fights and fistfights are ordinary occurrences, and they were 30 years ago too,” Byrne said. “It is the guns today that hurt everybody. Bowen, Senn, Roosevelt, if they did not have guns, if they were just fights, no one would have heard about them.”