LOS ANGELES – Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) Chief William Bratton, Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD) outgoing Superintendent Roy Romer and New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg announced during a Sept. 20 news conference a school safety initiative loosely modeled after a New York City school crime-busting program.
The initiative will bring together parents, teachers, administrators and neighbors and incorporate computers to help with brainstorming sessions to identify areas near campuses that have crimes. Participants will also be encouraged to propose solutions.
Called the Community CompStat program, it is much like the one used by LAPD, which has computers map where crimes are occurring by the type of offense. LAPD officials say the program is responsible for a 40-percent reduction in crime during the last four years. City officials are hoping to achieve similar results with the areas immediately surrounding LAUSD facilities, making it safer for students to go to and from school.
Community CompStat will begin in November at two city schools with high levels of crime: Fremont High School and Crenshaw High School. The program will then be expanded to other campuses in the Los Angeles area.
New York City schools began a similar program in 2004, and the initiative is credited with a 53-percent decrease in crime as well as an improvement in student test scores. School safety officers and police officers flooded 24 campuses and surrounding neighborhoods that have high levels of crime and cracked down on minor violations by students.
