SECTION:news

School rampages: Why don't they happen in the city?

The Associated Press

CHICAGO -- Every morning, Maria Marino passes gang turf on her way to Clemente High School. There she walks through a metal detector. There she passes five security guards. There she feels safe. A shooting in her school? The 17-year-old senior thinks not. "It could happen anywhere," she conceded Friday, "but I just don't imagine it happening here. I feel comfortable here. I think there's more possibilities for it to happen in the neighborhood." In the mass school shootings that have horrified the nation since 1997, a striking similarity has emerged: The tragedies have occurred in quiet and mostly white suburban or rural communities -- Littleton, Colo., Jonesboro, Ark., Conyers, Ga. -- not big cities typically associated with teen violence. Some experts say urban schools, while struggling with gangs and drugs, have so far escaped random shooting sprees for some basic reasons:LI In the city, a teen-ager with a gun is automatically thought to be up to no good. That isn't always the case in rural or suburban areas where people go hunting or take target practice. - Violence in the city tends to be aimed at individuals more often than it is unleashed indiscriminately. LI Perhaps most important, security is tighter. "Urban schools have had to deal with the issue of violence for a longer period of time," said Joanne McDaniel, research director of the Center for the Prevention of School Violence in Raleigh, N.C. "They may not be able to make a safe neighborhood, but at least they can make school a safe haven." LI Many city schools have conflict and anger management programs, mentoring and metal detectors. At Clemente, on Chicago's near West Side, security officials say they haven't found a gun since metal detectors were installed two years ago. "Mostly it's knives and pagers and lighters," said Steve Garcia, the school's security supervisor. Only about a quarter of the nation's largest 55 to 60 districts used metal detectors in the early 1990s; more than 95 percent do now, according to Ronald Stephens, director of the National School Safety Center in Westlake Village, Calif. However, Stephens cited a recent government study showing that only 4 percent of all school districts nationwide had metal detectors. LI The cramped urban setting may itself serve as a deterrent. The Jonesboro school, for example, had a wooded area from which the attack was launched. Columbine High School in Littleton had a large parking lot. "Imagine trying to bring in 30 bombs and all that weaponry in a Chicago high school," as was done in Columbine, said Laurence Steinberg, a psychology professor at Temple University and director of the MacArthur Foundation Research Network on Adolescent Development and Juvenile Justice. LI School safety experts note that while big-city schools still are more violent than rural or suburban ones, urban gangs tend to target rivals or other specific victims, rather than launching random assaults. Also, "gangs in urban areas typically do not see the schoolhouse as the place to carry out their turf war," McDaniel said. "They're going to do that in the streets." LI Some experts also say city kids obtain guns usually to commit crimes, while suburban and rural teens frequently own weapons for hunting and recreation. "The gun culture is different" outside the cities, said Paul Gray, a professor of sociology at Boston College. "It normalizes the possession and use of a gun." He added: "My kids never see me doing target practice. I don't belong to a gun club. I don't identify weapons with self-protection or leisure activity." All the gunmen in the school shootings have been white boys or young men, leading some sociologists to speculate about a growing sense of isolation and alienation among suburban teens who may enjoy material comforts but have troubled relationships with their peers and parents. Though urban schools have been spared mass shootings, many experts caution against assuming that such tragedies can't -- or won't -- happen there. And some also say inner-city violence is often overlooked. If the Columbine High massacre happened in the inner city, "I'm not sure it would have gotten the same media attention," said Ron Astor, professor of social work and education at the University of Michigan. "If it happens at 3:30, after the bell rings, then it's called community violence." At Chicago's Clemente High, 16-year-old Darnell Ivy shook his head Friday when he heard the recent reports about the Georgia shooting. "I thought, "Just more crazy kids.' There's some of those here," he said. Then he paused and added: "They're not so different from us."

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