May 12, 2008 3:03 am US/Pacific
Locke H.S. To Get More Security Following Fight
LOS ANGELES
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Students at Locke High School should expect more security following Friday's fight. (File)
CBS
Locke High School in South Los Angeles will be have extra security on Monday -- a result of Friday's melee on the campus that involved hundreds of students, school officials said.
A fight began shortly before 1 p.m. Friday and quickly grew into an out-of-control brawl.
Dozens of school and LAPD, some in riot gear and using their batons, spent about a half hour to restore order.
The school was put on lockdown, with students confined to classrooms and allowed to leave one classroom at a time to avoid further violence.
Three students were arrested for fighting, and one non-student was taken into custody for the illegal possession of a knife, Susan Cox of the LAUSD said.
Four students suffered minor injuries, she said, though witnesses said they saw students knocked out and bloodied.
On Monday, members of the school district's human relations staff that are trained in dispute resolution will also be at the campus at San Pedro and 111th streets.
Meanwhile, community activists will hold news conferences at the campus.
At 8 a.m., Earl Ofari Hutchinson of the Los Angeles Urban Policy Roundtable is expected to call on Los Angeles Unified Superintendent David Brewer to declare "Black and Brown Unity Against Violence Day."
Around 10 a.m., anti-immigration activist Ted Hayes is expected to blame the brawl on Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa and "anchor children" of illegal immigrants. He is also expected to call for a federal investigation into "ethno-racial cleansing."
Victor Wong, 18, told the Los Angeles Times the fight was not about race but started as a confrontation between members of rival tagging, or graffiti, crews.
"It was a crew-on-crew thing," he said. "They asked for my help, but I'm graduating. I'm done with all that."
Wong said a planned fight Friday with 10 students on each side -- the outgrowth of a one-on-one fight Wednesday involving one black and one Hispanic student -- grew into a riot involving hundreds of students.
The two groups met on the handball courts, and "all of them started going at it," Wong told the newspaper.
The fight quickly spread across the campus. Locke has about 2,600 students, about 65 percent of them Latino and 35 percent black.
Los Angeles Unified School District police said two officers are assigned to Locke, but about 60 officers were dispatched to the campus to end brawl.
Los Angeles police dispatched more than a dozen patrol cars and about 50 officers.
Locke is about to be reorganized as a cluster of charter schools run by Green Dot Public Schools, which will take over in July. Some faculty and staff have accused the district of letting the campus drift in its final year as a traditional public school.
Locke has been especially plagued by tagging crews. The school employs two full-time workers to paint over graffiti, Green Dot's Kelly Hurley, the transition's manager, told The Times.
(© 2008 CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. Wire services contributed to this report.)
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