EVERETT – A surge in gang activity around Mariner High School has led Sheriff Rick Bart to assign a deputy to patrol the school.
Bart said he isn’t worried about what’s going on inside Mariner – it’s what’s happening in the neighborhood.
“The school is situated in the middle of a high-crime area,” which includes a lot street crime, Bart said.
“We’ve got important issues to address around the high school,” he said. “We hope being in the school will help with that.”
Mariner staff and students say they feel safe at the Mukilteo district school, located just south of the Everett city limits in unincorporated Snohomish County.
They said they worry, however, that news of a deputy at the school will only fuel rumors that Mariner is a dangerous place.
“I have never felt unsafe here. To me it’s frustrating just because we already have a bad reputation that we don’t deserve,” said senior Teeah Hall, 17. “There are two different communities. There’s Mariner and there’s the outside community where all of this is happening. Mariner is not the problem.”
Police agree that the high school is not the epicenter of the criminal activity in the area.
The school, however, lies in a 1-square-mile neighborhood that accounts for 5 percent of all the calls to sheriff’s deputies. Back in March, the sheriff’s office launched a yearlong program to crack down on crime south of Everett.
Bart says he is concerned some of the crime will spill into the school and affect students.
He and school officials agreed to temporarily bring in a deputy, who started patrolling the school earlier this month.
“Stuff that happens outside could end up in the school, especially gangs,” Bart said. “We want to prevent that.”
Already, tags can be seen on an electrical box just outside the school, and down Fourth Avenue W. across from Voyager Middle School.
And some teens who claim to belong to a large Los Angeles gang are posting their school affiliation – Mariner – on their Myspace.com pages.
One profile also links to a YouTube video of what appears to be a fight between a group of boys and another boy at a carnival or festival. Police have not yet been able to determine where the incident happened.
Police say they are concerned that gangs are recruiting Mariner students. One of the most active gangs in the county was started about a year ago by former Mariner students, sheriff’s detective Steve Haley said.That gang is being investigated for possible connections to the shooting death of Dennis Riojas, 19, on Aug. 5.
Police also are looking at possible gang ties in a group of people that reportedly twice pulled a woman from her car and beat her outside an apartment complex across the street from Mariner late last month.
The sheriff’s office hopes having a deputy inside the school will help bridge the gap between students and police.
Principal Brent Kline said he believes the deputy can be a good liaison between the school and community.
“I think it will also further the effectiveness of their (Operation Clean Sweep) program outside of school,” he said.
The majority of school districts around the county pay for uniformed police officers to be in their schools. A number of cities also pay a portion of the cost for school resource officers.
The Lakewood School District has a small grant but pays for a deputy mainly through its local levy. It’s expensive, but it’s been a strong priority for the school board, Superintendent Larry Francois said.
A school resource officer was credited with foiling an attack by a former Lakewood student who was bent on taking hostages when he rushed into a classroom with a pair of butcher knives in May 2002.
“(The officer) has developed a connection with the students. He also knows what’s going on in the community and how it directly impacts our school,” Francois said.
The Mukilteo School District is one of a few districts in the county that doesn’t use school resource officers. Instead, the district spreads seven civilian security guards among four secondary schools.
“A (school resource officer) is very expensive. It wasn’t feasible for us,” district spokesman Andy Muntz said.
A school resource officer from the sheriff’s office costs about $92,000 a year, sheriff’s Bureau Chief Tom Greene said.
That’s about three times what it costs for one security officer, Muntz said.
Mariner had a school resource officer a few years ago. The program ended when the sheriff’s office stopped paying for the program. The department pulled funding after it interpreted a state audit to mean that the sheriff couldn’t provide a school resource officer for free, Greene said.
Hall and a group of her peers said they don’t believe Mariner needs a school resource officer.
“It’s a nice comfort, but it’s not a comfort needed here,” said senior Katie Nagle, 17.
The students and staff say they are frustrated that their achievements often are overshadowed by one or two students who have caused trouble outside of school or by an incident that makes the news and just happens to be near the school.
They pointed to the assault that happened across from Mariner late last month. A group of young people was involved in an attack on a woman after school hours. A few of those involved were students at Mariner.
“Why is it when anything negative happens in the area, the Mariner sign is flashed on TV? That puts the image in the community’s head that’s not right,” longtime teacher Nick Angelos said.
“Ninety-nine-point-nine percent of the students are great kids. That’s what the community doesn’t understand. We’re doing great things here.”
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