The Los Angeles Police Department, the sheriff's department, Palisades Patrol and at least a dozen other law enforcement agencies in the county will add school campuses as firm fixtures to their daily patrols beginning Monday.
Altered beat patrol routes will pass by every public school, and any private school that requests them, as students return from winter break Monday. The visits highlight a response to the Dec. 12 shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, CT. that left 20 children dead.
Shortly after tragedy and the response from the Los Angeles Unified School District, LAPD Chief Charlie Beck said he wanted to increase the presence of officers where every K-5 and middle school in L.A. gets at least one visit a day.
LAUSD Superintendent John Deasy, School President Monica Garcia and School Police Chief Steve Zipperman are expected to visit to elementary schools Monday.
Deasy and Garcia are slated to visit Maple Street Primary Center, 3601 S. Maple Ave. Zipperman is scheduled to visit Main Street Elementary School, 129 E. 53rd St.
"A barrier has been broken in our culture, and that barrier is the safety of our youngest residents," Beck said during the Dec. 17 news conference. It's all our jobs to make sure that we resurrect that barrier and that our children are safe."
Pali Patrol, as Gates Security, is adding extra staffing for the five public schools and the 10 private schools from Pacific Palisades to Malibu and Thousand Oaks. They provide patrol, alarm monitoring and camera services to these schools and they can monitor several of these schools by camera day and night.
