This is real life in a brutal economy: There will be no police officers assigned to the three high schools in the Natomas Unified School District this fall.
The district says it can't afford them. Natomas may have the only public high schools in Sacramento without a police presence.
Amazing. Just last year, Natomas experienced a startling spike in home invasions with high-school-age suspects. Campus cops at Inderkum, Natomas and Discovery high schools deal with gangs and truancy every day.
A few months ago, when a dry cleaner was robbed near Inderkum High, a campus cop arrested the suspects because he knew them.
"If you take those police officers away, you are not going to have the (police) intelligence they have right now. They are with these kids. They know what's going on," said Curtis Cook, a Natomas resident active in the community.
As with everything in Sacramento, this is political – and nothing is more political now than government and school budgets bleeding red. Natomas officials say they have to cut $13 million from their next budget so paying the city of Sacramento $215,000 for two city cops and their equipment is a luxury they can't afford.
There is your symbol of an economic and government meltdown: public safety as a luxury on high school campuses. Teri Burns, president of the Natomas Unified School District board, said the choice came down to campus cops vs. student counselors.
And the way the decision came down?
"There was just this letter that we received saying 'We no longer need your services,' " said Sacramento Police Chief Rick Braziel. "That's disturbing. What is your plan?"
Braziel said the Police Department cannot fund the officers. The city is running a $50 million budget deficit and the department is too small.
If schools can't pay the bill, the officers get folded back into the force. They can respond to crimes on campus, but won't be there to defuse confrontations before they escalate. What complicates this issue further is that Natomas Unified was recently slammed by the Sacramento County grand jury for its purchase of 41 acres of farmland for six times its value in 2007.
The report charged that Superintendent Steve Farrar failed to exercise proper oversight over the $13.3 million purchase. There is no doubt that the Natomas district – like all districts – is getting crushed by a recession affecting everyone.
But there is also no doubt that these people have exercised horrific financial judgment in the recent past. They failed to do their homework in buying a piece of land they may never be able to develop and were arrogant every step of the way.
Now they say they can't afford campus security. Is it a bad economy? Bad leadership? Or both? Those questions won't matter if a student gets hurt.
Call The Bee's Marcos Breton, (916) 321-1096.
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