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Byline: Karen Zapf
Jul. 8–Allegheny County District Attorney Stephen A. Zappala Jr. has a plan to cut down on fighting and violence in the Woodland Hills and Pittsburgh Public Schools districts.
Zappala’s office will set up a system to handle cases involving assaults on teachers, police officers and students, he said Monday. Through an agreement with Common Pleas Court, Assistant District Attorney Patrick Schulte and one juvenile court judge will be assigned to cases involving the two school districts, he said.
Judge Kim Clark, who heads the Family Division, will hear the cases two days a month, said Jim Rieland, administrator of juvenile probation.
Rieland said of 259 cases of aggravated assaults on teachers from Sept. 1, 2007, through May 15, 182 originated from Pittsburgh Public Schools and 42 were from Woodland Hills. Aggravated assaults on teachers constitute everything from touching, shoving or pushing a teacher to injuries a teacher suffers while breaking up fights between students, Rieland said.
“We are not going to permit that to continue,” Zappala vowed. “We want the schools to be safe.”
Zappala became involved in Woodland Hills in November, after then-Swissvale police Chief James Ohrman complained that school officials repeatedly failed to notify police about serious criminal offenses in schools. West Junior High School is located in Swissvale.
When student fights and teacher injuries came to a boiling point again in spring, Zappala assigned detectives from his office and the Violent Crime Firearms Task Force to periodically visit the high school campus in Churchill and check vehicles and monitor students’ activities.
Zappala said he doesn’t prefer to have “a police state on campus.” He expects the continuity of a single prosecutor and judge to result in better handling of cases because they would become acquainted with students.
“I’m hoping for the same success that we’ve had with domestic-abuse prosecutions,” Zappala said. “Repeat offenders are treated differently than first-time offenders.”
He said he aims for better coordination with Shuman Juvenile Detention Center.
That pleases Swissvale police Chief Greg Geppert, who said students taken to Shuman often came to school the next day.
“Our problem is getting juvenile court to do something with (students involved in fights and other violent acts),” Geppert said.
The chief said he worries about what might happen when nearly 300 students from East Junior High School in Turtle Creek, which is closing, come to West Junior High this fall.
“I expect a lot of problems with that,” said Geppert, who wants to assign a second resource officer to West Junior High.
Zappala’s plan would address elementary students by introducing an anti-bullying program modeled after one from Cape Coral, Fla., where a student committed ******* in 2005 after being bullied by a classmate. The plan would direct school districts to develop a policy regarding bullying and harassment, and to report instances to parents of bullies and victims.
David Johnston, director of pupil personnel services in Woodland Hills, said the district implemented a bullying policy during the most recent school year.
“It has helped children who may not think that something is bullying behavior (to) look at what they’re doing,” Johnston said.
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