School crimes under wraps: assaults, robberies on campus not always reported to police

By Jessica Blanchard and Casey McNerthney, Seattle Post-Intelligencer, Sept. 27, 2007

First Place, Society of Professional Journalists Northwest Excellence in Journalism Contest, Education (2007)

King County prosecutors on Wednesday charged two Seattle teenagers  in a sexual assault on a developmentally disabled female classmate in a  Rainier Beach High School restroom in June - an incident that school officials never reported to police. 

A Seattle P-I review of police and Seattle Public Schools records shows that case isn't the only likely crime that wasn't reported to police. While a majority of incidents on school campuses were recorded into the district's safety and security logs and reported to police if necessary, some incidents weren't - including cases of assaults and strong-arm robberies. 

In a few cases, parents or victims say school officials urged them not to report the crimes to police at all. 

Pegi McEvoy, who recently took over as interim manger of Seattle schools' safety and security department, acknowledged that the district had a "fragmented" system for documenting and tracking alleged crimes on campuses. This fall, though, district security specialists began filing their reports electronically - one of a handful of changes intended to streamline and strengthen the reporting process, she said. 

"We see there are areas we want to improve, and we're addressing those," McEvoy said. "We want parents to have the confidence that we're doing everything we can do to keep our schools safe." 

Under state law, educators, administrators and others who work with children are considered "mandatory reporters" and are required to alert local police or the state's Child Protective Services if they suspect a child is being abused or neglected. 

While simple violations of school rules can be handled by the school district, police want to be notified if any crime is believed to have been committed on school grounds, Seattle police spokesman Mark Jamieson said. 

"The schools can do their own documentation, but if there's a crime they have an obligation to call police," he said. 

But records appear to show a number of instances in the 2006-07 school year in which school officials failed to notify police of alleged crimes. A sampling: 

In the Rainier Beach case, the two boys are accused of forcing the girl into a men's bathroom at the school last June. One watched the door while the other sexually assaulted the girl in a stall, according to court documents. The girl escaped and told a teacher, according to a police report, but police weren't notified until the girl's grandmother reported the incident nearly three weeks later.

On Wednesday, 18-year-old Diojanique Davis was charged with third-degree rape and unlawful imprisonment. A 16-year-old boy was charged as a juvenile with unlawful imprisonment and communication with a minor for immoral purposes. 

The mother of a high-school girl who received a fractured nose, concussion and other injuries after being beaten in the hallway at Marshall Alternative High School told police that school officials urged her not to call police about the assault. She was told that doing so "would be like calling the FBI and that the police don't have jurisdiction inside the schools," the report notes. Police can investigate crimes at schools. 

At South Lake High School, a 15-year-old girl was caught carrying a "marijuana-type substance," a lighter, two knives with 3 1/2 -inch blades, another knife with a 1 3/4 -inch blade, 15 nails, two cans of Mace and a 1 1/2 -foot crescent wrench. 

Administrators at Cleveland found two knives, four bags of a "marijuana-type substance," a hammer and a container of Mace on a friend of hers. Police weren't notified about either incident. 

In a handful of cases, school officials confiscated pellet guns or BB guns that students had brought to school. In at least two of those cases, students had been shot and injured by the weapons, but police were not notified. 

In May, a boy at Dearborn Elementary was injured after being chased at recess by a group of fifth-graders and pushed down a hill. As the boy tried to climb back up, one of the boys urinated on him. The victim's father reported the incident to police after he felt the school "wasn't taking the matter seriously," according to the police report. 

In another case at Marshall, a teacher said she was "frightened" by a student who wielded a knife, and told him to go to the in-school detention classroom. He was later found wandering the hallways, according to the school's incident report. Police weren't contacted because the teacher said the student "did not point the knife toward anyone." 

While she couldn't comment on specific cases, McEvoy said she believes administrators and security specialists are using their best judgment about whether to notify police. Until last year, school officials would routinely confer with their "school emphasis team," which included security specialists and police officers whose beats involved working with schools. 

Budget cuts have meant those informal consultations between school officials and police happen far less frequently, McEvoy said. 

A case from Garfield High School last May illustrates how controversial those calls can be. 

After what the school defined as a fight between two juniors, one of the boys was injured badly enough to be attended to by the school nurse. He later went home with swelling, bruising and red marks on both sides of his face. Both boys were suspended, because administrators said the boy who was initially assaulted fought back and threw juice at his attacker. 

The boy's parents said he was assaulted and filed a police report after viewing a school surveillance video of the incident. The attack on their son appeared unprovoked, they said, and they were angry the school administrators decided to handle the case internally instead of notifying police. 

The parents did not want their names used because they feared retaliation against their son, who is still a Seattle Public Schools student. The boy's father, a physician, said his son still suffers from headaches, four months later. 

And the parents remain adamant that it was an assault, not a fight. 

"If this had happened in a workplace, the police would have been called immediately," said the boy's mother. "I'm upset not just at what happened to my son, but how the school handled it." 

Garfield High Principal Ted Howard said his school handled the case fairly and does not hesitate to call police. School employees always call police if a student is assaulted, he said. If it appears to be a "mutually combative fight," police may or may not be called but each incident is handled on a case-by-case basis, he said. 

"When we looked at the film, it was mutual," he said of the May incident. "We have a discipline matrix that we stick to, as we did in this case." 

But school officials shouldn't have to decide whether an incident at a school warrants police involvement, suggests Tomas Gahan, a deputy King County prosecuting attorney who serves as a liaison among schools, security specialists and the courts. 

"I don't want the principals or administrators to sort out what is a crime and what isn't," he said. "I'd rather have them make a call and have a detective figure it out." 

Having the police called doesn't necessarily mean kids will be charged with a crime, said Wyman Yip, chairman of the juvenile unit of the King County Prosecuting Attorney's Office. And if they are charged, all first-time misdemeanor and gross misdemeanor offenses are sent to diversion, where charges aren't filed if the juvenile accepts other penalties, such as community service. 

"We understand kids make mistakes," Yip said. "The main goal of the juvenile justice system isn't retribution, it's to rehabilitate."