by David Schaper
March 24, 2011 Like a lot of parents, Gretta Campbell worries about her 17-year-old daughter, a senior at Chicago's Hyde Park Academy High School on the city's South Side — especially right after school.
After all, one of the most dangerous times of day for teenagers is after school and that's especially true in the gang-infested neighborhoods of Chicago, where police and school officials are using federal stimulus funds to try to better protect kids on their way to and from school through a program called Safe Passage.
"My daughter ... walk[s] up and down these streets and I'm really concerned about the crime and the violence that's happening these days with our youth," Campbell says.
Campbell notes that it's not just mom who's concerned — her daughter is worried, too.
"She knew a little boy that was shot and killed here and that really hit hard," Campbell says of her daughter. "That really got next to her after her friend was killed here, so she does have a lot of concern walking back and forth to school."
A New Look At An Old Problem
Hyde Park Academy Principal Thomas Trotter says he's sensitive to what his students are going through.
"If you're a kid growing up in Chicago and you travel from Englewood to Woodlawn, you go through different gang territories, so they're a little bit alert or on edge in terms of making sure they get here safely and get back home safely," Trotter says. "That's always a concern."
And such concerns are nothing new — they actually date back decades. Getting to and from school in Chicago and other cities has sometimes been perilous for young people, but after-school violence began to increase a few years ago in Chicago after school officials closed several dozen schools and students began having to go through different neighborhoods to get to new schools.
Then, in September 2009, a brutal after-school street fight between teens from opposing neighborhoods was captured on cell phone video. The video showed the beating death of honor student Derrion Albert, and it soon went viral. After that, Chicago police and school officials ramped up the Safe Passage program.
"We've established unprecedented relationships with the Chicago Public Schools," says former Chicago Police Superintendent Jody Weis, who stepped down earlier this month.
Weis says high school principals and other school officials now meet regularly with their area police commanders and call police right away when they see trouble start.
"If the school officials notice that there's a problem brewing in the school," Weis says, "that information is passed informally, immediately over the telephone to our command staff and then we can take those measures necessary to curb the violence should that problem continue on out into the community."
More...
0 comments:
Post a Comment