I'm not sure what Iraq's Green Zone—the walled fortress housing U.S. occupation forces in central Baghdad—looks like, but the scene outside Clark High School during last month's homecoming football game had that same barricaded-in, keep-the-riffraff-out feel. School police ringed the perimeter of Collis stadium. By game's end, the place was Cops Central—lawmen patrolling the crowded parking lot, cruising the nearby blocks, urging a mass exodus of the teenage masses.
Such precautions are to be expected. The Pennwood and Arville area is no stranger to violence. The apartments just west of Clark are known haunts of Mara Salvatrucha, or MS-13, a violent El Salvadoran gang with purported (but so far unproven) links to al-Qaeda. Last month, authorities arrested 20-year-old Sergio Valencia, an alleged MS-13 member, on charges he fatally shot a rival gang member in August 2004. Five years earlier, gang members Maynor Villanueva, 17, and Tony Tejada, 14, sprayed bullets at a crowd of students standing on Clark's lawn, injuring two. (Villanueva became the first person sentenced on a Columbine-inspired state law enhancing penalties for felonies committed on campus and resulting in death or substantial bodily harm.)
Prior to the 1999 Clark incident, the last campus shooting took place at Rancho High in 1997.
So what to make of two campus shootings in less than five weeks?
Metro's gang unit discovered eight shell casings and arrested a drive-by-shooting suspect after the November 10 football game between Cimarron-Memorial and Cheyenne. North Las Vegas police reported two victims (the injuries weren't life-threatening) after gunfire erupted following the October 7 contest between Shadow Ridge and Cheyenne.
Is this the beginning of a trend?
Clark County School District police didn't return repeated phone messages, and a spokesman in the communications office said he didn't have enough information to comment.
The local shootings fit with surging national figures on violence at high-school games, says Ken Trump, president of Cleveland-based consulting firm National School Safety and Security Services. Data crunched by Trump's firm and USA Today note increases from 2003 to 2005 in incidents (from nine to 31), injuries (from seven to 33) and deaths (from two to four). A November 23 USA Today article cites examples of recent turbulence: four men arrested for trying to smuggle guns into an October 28 game in Nashville; October 7 melees at three Dallas-area games that left one person dead and nine wounded; nearly a dozen people arrested and three officers injured after fights at games in Richmond, Virginia, on October 15 and September 16. Trump says gang activity is one of many factors behind the violence.
"There are multiple dynamics at a school sporting event," he says. "You have a large physical facility to try to secure—the football field, parking lot, surrounding areas. You have large crowds, from 3,500 to 4,000 and, in some states, 10,000. It's often a larger crowd than what most school administrators, except maybe in Las Vegas, deal with on a day-to-day basis. Often, the security and police staffing are paid for out of school athletic department budgets. So you've got security and policing efforts pitted against the need to make a profit."
Many school districts hire off-duty cops. The problem there: Trump says they may not have the campus connections of a dedicated force. "The Clark County School District has a good school police department," he says. "Many of the CCSD cops know the kids who cause the problems. CCSD police also work with Metro on intelligence sharing."
Simple things can increase safety, Trump says:
Separate fans from the home and visiting teams. Makes sense to keep dueling factions apart. "Rivalry games have always been a problem," he says.
Encourage administrators at participating schools to talk before games. Get them sharing information about gang activity or other problems their schools may be dealing with. "This may be done, but it isn't done enough," he says.
Use metal detectors and strengthen ticket-taking procedures. I didn't see any detectors at Clark's homecoming. After showing my media business card, the folks at the gate waved me through.
If none of this works, Trump says, switch to day games and early-morning weekend contests; the Clark County School District did so briefly in the '90s.
"But lots of school districts don't have the political will to do this," he concedes.
"Special-events planning involves more than people saying on Wednesday that we need cops on Friday," he continues. "Some of the people who can walk through the gate at a Friday night game are the type of people who wouldn't and shouldn't be allowed to walk into a high school during the day ... We're just now really capturing school officials' attentions about the problem of violence at games. But if people are willing to invest time and money in adequate staffing, the problem can be managed."