City responds to spike in student deaths

The teenagers looked like any other students making their way to school after spring break. They greeted each other with bleary eyes, shoved their hands into oversized jackets to avoid the early morning chill and reluctantly filed onto a Chicago Transit Authority bus.

But for this group of students, from the ABLA Homes public housing development, there was tension underlying the routine spring ritual -- carried out this week under the watchful eyes of their parents, alderman, principal and police, who escorted the buses to Crane Tech High School.

Many of the 120 students from ABLA have not been to school since March 7, when, authorities allege, a 15-year-old boy from the housing project shot and killed 18-year-old Crane student Ruben Ivy less than a block from the school. ABLA parents feared retaliation.

And they had a long list of reasons to worry.

The number of violent deaths involving students in the nation's third-largest school district has increased so dramatically in the past two years that the Chicago Police Department is increasing school patrols and soon will be the first department in the country with live access to thousands of security cameras mounted outside -- and inside -- schools.

Since September, 20 Chicago Public Schools students have been killed, 18 by gunfire. Last school year, 24 of the more than 30 students killed were shot to death, compared with between 10 and 15 fatal shootings in the years before.

"The loss of life that we've seen among our young people is ... devastating," school district spokesman Michael Vaughn said. "This gun nonsense has reached a crisis level."

Chicago Public Schools, whose CEO Arne Duncan supports gun control, is one of the only urban districts to track how many students are killed by guns -- though the slayings all have occurred in neighborhoods, not on school property. New York and Los Angeles schools do not track student deaths outside of school and, though police in those cities keep statistics on deaths of children younger than 18, they don't specify whether they're school-age.

Nationally, homicide was the second-leading cause of death for young people ages 10 to 24 in 2004, and of those killed, 81 percent were killed with a firearm, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. For blacks that year, homicide was the leading cause of death.

Chicago's overall homicide rate, like that in other major cities, dropped to a record low in 2007. But the murders that do occur are hitting young people hard, frightening students and parents and prompting everyone from Mayor Richard M. Daley to activists to call for action.

Monday's escort for the Crane students, dubbed "Operation Safe Passage" is just one of the ways Chicago is dealing with the wave of violence.

Three of Michelle Johnson's children attend Crane, and she and other parents and students said the escort keeps their fears at bay -- for now.

"For right now, I feel it's kinda safe," Johnson said, noting she's willing to take her children to school every day until the situation stabilizes.

While her daughter still refuses to go back to Crane, her 17-year-old son, Andrew Brown, a junior, said he was never worried. "I wasn't part of that incident that happened," he said, referring to Ivy's shooting.

Officials won't say how many additional officers were deployed to schools after spring break, but police spokeswoman Monique Bond described it as a "substantial complement." Before the stepped-up security, each CPS high school had two police officers assigned as part of their beat, Vaughn said.

Bond said the officers focus on the schools at arrival and dismissal "to make sure that there's safe passage to and from school."

Daley, a vocal proponent of gun control, recently announced a new resource for police -- access to the 4,500 security cameras mounted inside and outside about 200 elementary and high schools.

The real-time video from the cameras once was available only to school officials, but now police and the city's Office of Emergency Management and Communications will be able to see the action. Daley said indoor cameras will be used only in emergencies, and only outside cameras will be used for routine monitoring.

Daley also has rolled back the curfew times for minors by half an hour, to 10 p.m. on weekdays and 11 p.m. on weekends.

Many observers insist the issue isn't a CPS problem but a symptom of overall violence in the city. In fact, students in some of the city's most violent neighborhoods say school -- with metal detectors, private security guards and uniformed police officers -- is the one place they feel safe.

Antigun activists and officials say the violence highlights a dangerous reality: Arguments among young people that used to be resolved with fist fights now end in gunfire.

"They're just shooting out of rage," said the Rev. Michael Pfleger, an outspoken priest on the city's South Side whose church is putting up a $2,500 reward for information each time a CPS student is killed. The Chicago Board of Education has promised to match with its own $2,500 reward.

Tio Hardiman, executive director of the anti-violence group CeaseFire, said many young people consider a firearm their only protection, and the way to reduce violence is to stop petty arguments and incidents among young people before they escalate into gunfire.

"A lot of young guys in the community, first of all, would rather get caught with a gun than without a gun," Hardiman said. "There's a need a dire need for more conflict resolution trainings."

He also noted a certain hopelessness that develops among young people who repeatedly witness their friends, family and classmates cut down by violence as the adults around them are seemingly helpless to stop it.

"When the youth are killing each other like this, they're trying to tell us something," Hardiman said.