Views on youth violence offered

A Palo Verde High School student is shot dead as he walks home from school with friends.

A Western High School student is seriously wounded outside a middle school.

In both incidents, classmates are accused of pulling the trigger.

Those and other incidents have officials looking for answers to the recent increase in student-involved shootings.

What they heard, in a survey released Thursday, was that gangs, easy access to drugs, alcohol and weapons, and a lack of parental involvement in the lives of children are among the factors behind the violence.

"Some kids feel there's no way to address some of their problems but to get violent," said Rick Culley, a consultant who helped compile the report. "Guns have become just an extension of old-fashioned fighting."

Parents and other adults said the "Sin City image," a lack of places and activities for young people, and portrayals of violence in the media were part of the problem.

Some suggested that students be taken on "preventative" field trips to morgues and prisons and be required to undergo drug testing before being given driver's licenses.

The parents believe they "live in an adult playground, with no place for children to play," said consultant Dale Erquiaga of Get Consensus, who also helped compile the report.

Input was gathered from about 25 Clark County School District students and 50 adults -- including parents, school faculty and local leaders -- who participated in closed-door discussions. Culley, who is president of the Institute for Executive Development, and Erquiaga said that the participants were drawn from different ethnic and economic backgrounds and that the students' grade point averages spanned the spectrum.

At a forum to discuss the findings Thursday, Sheriff Doug Gillespie and Clark County School District Superintendent Walt Rulffes said the report will affect how their organizations function.

"We as a community have to demonstrate a level of courage and admit that we have a problem," Gillespie said. "We have a lot of hard work ahead of us."

He added: "Law enforcement cannot do this alone."

Rulffes said the district will focus on prevention, including upgrading security equipment, providing gang-awareness training and adding cultural diversity to the curriculum.

"We're really committed to making substantial adjustments," he said.

Students were split on one solution that has been proposed: metal detectors.

They agreed metal detectors would help keep some guns out of schools, but they worried some students would try to sneak guns into school because they would gain more respect for skirting the increased security.

Overall, the students said self-esteem, peer pressure and a lack of parental involvement were as key as alcohol, drugs and gangs in contributing to the violence. Unstable homes and those where parents are gone most of the day working, the students said, had them searching for attention and approval elsewhere.

"Some of the things you can't share at home, so you seek support on the street," one student said in the report. None of the students who participated was named in the document.

The adults surveyed in the report worried that the community doesn't understand or embrace cultural diversity and that students have a difficult time learning to accept such differences. And many parents thought schools were inconsistent with discipline.

"There is a long list of community issues to be addressed," Erquiaga said.

While saying the report will spur changes, Gillespie said the Metropolitan Police Department had been working for months to stop youth violence.

"This effort did not start the afternoon Chris Privett lost his life," he said of the Palo Verde freshman gunned down in February as he walked home from school.

Contact reporter Scott Spjut at sspjut@reviewjournal.com or (702) 383-0279.