Reports of Crime in Schoolyards Rise

Physical assaults on public school campuses--mainly schoolyard brawls--rose 16% last year throughout California, a double-digit pattern that was generally followed in Los Angeles, Orange and Ventura counties, according to a report released Thursday.

The California Safe Schools Assessment, conducted by the state Department of Education, also found drug and alcohol offenses increased statewide by 7%, including reported drug sales increasing by 32% during the 2000-01 school year from the previous one. Also, property crimes rose by 1%, including a 10% increase in graffiti and an 8% increase in vandalism.

The biggest increases were in crimes against people, including battery, assault and sexual offenses.

Battery, described as physical altercations without weapons, was by far the most commonly reported incident in that category, increasing by 18%.

“The highest rate by far occurs during the middle-school years,” said state Supt. Delaine Eastin in a prepared statement, “when peer pressure, bullying and other social conflicts can result in the disengagement of our students.”

Officials Say Vigilance Causes Higher Numbers

Some education officials, however, cautioned that part of the increase in offenses may be the result of better reporting by schools and districts rather than an actual increase in incidents.

Cypress Elementary School District in Orange County, for example, reported 17 incidents of battery last year after reporting none the year before.

“I’ve been with the district nine years,” said William Eller, superintendent of the 4,900-student district. “And I didn’t notice anything significantly different last year” in terms of crime.

What Eller did notice, however, was that school officials were defining incidents such as bullying and schoolyard brawls as cases of battery and reporting them to the state. In the past they only dealt with those incidents as internal disciplinary issues.

“I am not discouraged by the fact that we are reporting more,” Eller said. “Society is a different place today than it was 10, 15, 20 years ago.”

In Orange County as a whole, the rate of reported property crimes dipped by more than 9%, but crimes against persons rose by 32.9%.

Orange County campuses remain some of the safest in California, ranking below state levels on all types of reportable crimes. Nonetheless, there were 985 cases of battery and 83 incidents of assault with a deadly weapon reported last year compared with 719 and 66, respectively, for the year before. There were no murders.

Sensitized by highly publicized cases of school violence in recent years, school administrators said they are becoming increasingly more vigilant about children’s conduct, even about perennial behavior that might have been viewed more innocently in the past.

The 22,275-student Anaheim City School District, for example, saw all its crime statistics drop last year with one curious exception. The district reported 10 sex offenses in its elementary schools after reporting very few such cases for five years.

All of last year’s offenses involved inappropriate touching of girls by boys, district spokeswoman Suzi Brown said.

Two of the cases were later determined to not qualify as sexual offenses because the boys were too young to have had sexual intent.

Brown said part of the difficulty for teachers is defining the right category of offense even when they know the behavior is unacceptable.

“Last year, we looked at our battery numbers, and we found administrators were very inconsistent” in how they reported similar incidents, Brown said.

“We had them go through more training, with videotapes about bullying and harassment at each grade level so we could be more consistent from school to school,” she said.

More Officers to Catch More Offenses

Santa Ana Unified School District has achieved some of that consistency by entrusting its in-house Police Department with the job of reporting crimes to state education officials.

But that, district officials say, artificially inflates Santa Ana’s crime numbers compared with other districts.

The largest district in Orange County reported some of the highest rates of offenses and posted some of the biggest increases in the county last year, but that can be deceiving, said Santa Ana school Police Chief Jim Miyashiro.

In Santa Ana, the only school system in the county with its own law enforcement agency, a police report automatically generates a school safety report, including cases involving students on their way to and from school, Miyashiro said.

In districts patrolled by city or county law enforcement, that is not usually the case.

The 60,600-student district has also increased its police force from four sworn officers five years ago to 25, which means the department can catch and report more offenses. Santa Ana reported 188 cases of battery and 21 cases of assault with a deadly weapon last year compared with 97 and six the year before.

The rates still remain below statewide figures.

“To be honest, I don’t see an increase in crime at all,” Miyashiro said. “It is a matter of reporting the data. Overall, our campuses are very safe.”

The statewide crime rates were based on reports from 1,043 school districts and county offices serving more than 6 million students from kindergarten through 12th grade.

In Los Angeles County, battery crimes increased for the fourth year in a row, with a 15.5% jump in 2000-01. The 720,000-student Los Angeles Unified School District, which has the largest enrollment in the state, experienced an 11.6% jump in battery crimes.

In Ventura County, battery crimes increased by 14.8%, from 268 in 1999-2000 to 314 last year. That includes the Oxnard Elementary district, where battery arrests went from 25 in 1999-2000 to 36 last year.

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Times staff writer Jennifer Ragland contributed to this report.