Police Magnet School Plan Is Unveiled

Aiming to cultivate its own community-based police officers, a group of Los Angeles educators, police, city officials and business leaders on Thursday announced that the city’s first Police Academy magnet school programs will begin this fall.

With courses in forensic science and conflict resolution as well as regular contact with working police officers, the new high school programs will be attached to three existing law magnets and try to draw the racially diverse, native Angelenos some critics say have been lacking at the Los Angeles Police Department’s training academy.

“This is a model for the nation,” Mayor Richard Riordan said during a news conference at the academy in Elysian Park, where he was flanked by six students already enrolled in the program. “It will prepare young Angelenos for a college education and for the Police Department.”

The program is loosely modeled after a similar magnet at John F. Kennedy High School in Sacramento, which has been in effect since 1990. Organizers said they know of no others in the country.

Each Los Angeles school--Monroe High in North Hills, Dorsey High in Crenshaw, and Wilson High in El Sereno--will start with 30 ninth- and 10th-graders. Juniors and seniors will be added over the next two years.

“This will really give the kids a test of what it’s like to be a police officer, I think,” said Joan Elam, principal at Monroe High. “More importantly it will make them think about whether police work is the right work for them.”

Students are currently being recruited at area middle and high schools, and their reaction so far has been enthusiastic, said Roberta Weintraub, the former Los Angeles school board member who conceived the new magnet programs. “We’ve gotten a far better response than we thought we would have,” she said.

About 60 students will participate in a six-week summer program, working as interns at police stations to prepare for the fall session.

The students at Thursday’s news conference said they expect the magnet programs to pay immediate dividends and prepare them for future careers.

“Going to this school is gonna give me a real boost to get into shape physically and mentally to be a good police officer and a role model for kids,” said Oganes Kuyumdzhyan, 14, of Northridge, who will attend the program at Monroe High this fall.

Dorsey High student Shameika Humphrey, 14, said she hopes to learn enough from the program to be able to deter other teenagers from joining gangs and stealing. “It’s something I’ve thought about a lot, being an officer,” Shameika said.

Supporters hope the program will ultimately boost the number of officers who come from Los Angeles neighborhoods and reduce the need to recruit outside the city or state.

“This is an ideal opportunity to grow our own recruits for the Police Academy and to have people from the community work within their community,” Weintraub said.

Her proposal was quickly embraced by officials at City Hall, the Police Department and the Los Angeles Unified School District. LAPD Deputy Chief David Gascon said the new magnets will provide a perfect opportunity for police officers to work with prospective recruits at an early age.

City Councilwoman Laura Chick shepherded a motion for the program through the City Council to allow the use of police officers in the program.

“We very much want to be recruiting young people from our own city, and this is a pool of future recruits who we can reach at an early age, especially the young girls,” said Chick, who represents the west San Fernando Valley.

The programs are being funded through a $250,000 donation from the 20th Century Insurance Company in Woodland Hills, which will be used to buy equipment for physical training centers and to hire staff and grant writers to secure the money it will need to continue.

“None of this would have been possible without this private funding,” said Weintraub, who will coordinate the fund-raising efforts. “It’s another example of the importance of public-private partnerships to support necessary and unique programs like this.”