Full-Time Cop on Campus Proposed for Jordan High : Education: Racial fights among students spur proposal by vice mayor. Police Department and school district question the need.

LONG BEACH —  In the wake of a racially charged disturbance at Jordan High School, the City Council is considering assigning a Long Beach police officer to the troubled campus.

Last Tuesday, council members asked City Manager James C. Hankla to report back in two weeks with ideas and cost estimates for adding security to the North Long Beach school.

Vice Mayor Jeffrey A. Kellogg, who made the proposal, said he will support nothing less than a full-time police officer on campus. On Nov. 18, “We had a tactical alert with practically every available police officer at Jordan High, with a helicopter and a SWAT team,” said Kellogg, a 1972 graduate of the school.

But neither the Police Department nor the Long Beach Unified School District is calling for an officer at Jordan High or any other school campus. Officials said they are pleased with the current security.

And while Kellogg labeled the incident a riot, police and school officials said the disturbance was blown out of proportion.

“It wasn’t a riot. They were kids creating havoc, but they did not destroy anything,” said Police Cmdr. Anthony W. Batts.

The incident began with a lunchtime fight between two girls, a black and a Latina, which escalated into five or six shoving matches between other students, said Principal Alta Cooke. The exact number of students involved is unclear, but 12 were arrested.

Some of the fights were the result of racial tensions on campus and others were gang-related, officials said. The chaos that ensued, however, was the result of teen-agers becoming excited by all the commotion, according to police.

“If you have 3,000 kids having lunch and you have a fight break out to their right, kids are going to run to see what’s going on. Then, if a fight breaks out to their left, they’ll run there. And when the police arrived, they started running everywhere,” Batts said.

Campus personnel got the students back into classrooms, and dozens of police officers wearing riot helmets and carrying clubs arrived. A helicopter landed in front of the school on Atlantic Avenue. School was dismissed early.

No one was injured as police evacuated the campus, but many students refused to leave the area and some pelted police officers with cups, apples and bottles, Officer Margarita DeWitt said.

In addition to arresting students, police detained two adults for failing to disperse. Most of the students arrested were suspended and have since returned to school, the principal said.

The day after the skirmishes, about half of Jordan’s students did not show up for school, Cooke said.

Since then, “The students have settled down and are continuing their education,” Cooke said.

Racially motivated fights are not new to Jordan High or other Long Beach and Southeast schools. In Compton, Centennial, Dominguez and Compton high schools have also had racially charged clashes this year.

The Long Beach school district does not keep a record of the causes of fights, such as racial tension or gang battles. During the first six months of this year, officials reported 2,210 fights on campuses, with the bulk of those--1,490--in the middle schools.

Officials also reported 178 assaults against students and 27 against teachers, 196 batteries against students and 52 against teachers, 27 assaults with a deadly weapon against students and none against teachers. There were also 54 sex offenses, two of them felonies. No breakdowns were immediately available for individual campuses.

The district has about 75,000 students.

At Jordan, Cooke said that racial tension occasionally flares up on the ethnically diverse campus. But the problems, she said, are a reflection of what’s happening in the area, which is surrounded by economically depressed neighborhoods in Long Beach, Compton and Paramount.

“I believe that the problem we’re having is in the community. The school is just mirroring those problems,” Cooke said. “There are racial problems, gang problems, economic problems. . . . People are out of jobs (and) our young people have major problems in their homes.”

A full-time police officer, as Kellogg is proposing, may not have a big impact on such problems, school officials said. Neither Cooke nor Carl Cohn, superintendent of the Long Beach Unified School District, wanted to express an opinion on Kellogg’s idea.

“If at some point in (the Police Department’s) judgment, an officer on campus would be helpful, we would have no reluctance in cooperating,” Cohn said.

Saying the school district has “an excellent working relationship” with Chief William C. Ellis and his department, Cohn said he feels the campus is safe.

Ellis said the department already has a patrol car assigned to schools in the area. It spends half its time at Jordan High.

In addition, two officers lift weights with students in the school gym as part of the Police Athletic League program that started on campus last week.

But Kellogg pointed out that Jordan had a full-time officer on campus in the past. While the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department patrolled North Long Beach, a deputy was assigned to Jordan High for over a year as a part of a school magnet program funded by a state grant.

“By having that officer, a lot of problems were averted,” Kellogg said.

But the grant ran out, and to place an officer full-time at Jordan High would mean “taking an officer from somewhere else,” Ellis said. In addition, Cooke said that the deputy assigned to work at Jordan last year spent most of his time teaching classes dealing with law enforcement or lecturing on related subjects, not patrolling the campus.

Some council members also expressed concerns about Kellogg’s proposal. Councilman Alan S. Lowenthal said that the proposal should have been discussed with Jordan High or school district officials.