Nearby Killing Casts Cloud Over Md. School

"I don't know how it started, but it's almost gang-related," said a freshman whose mother asked that he not be identified because she was worried for his safety. The student said the school was too crowded -- more than 2,800 students attend, and there are about 20 portable classrooms on the campus -- making it hard to tell who belongs there and who doesn't. "It's more like a 'My neighborhood is better than yours' type of thing," he said. "It can turn into fights, because arguments go back and forth."

The student government association released an unsigned statement defending Flowers: "Our school environment is generally calm, productive, and without gangs intimidating students in our hallways, which has been erroneously reported in the press."

"The school is safe," said its principal, Helena Nobles-Jones. "No one has given me any factual data to say it is unsafe."

Zuleyma Herrera, a senior who attended a vigil for Richardson on Friday, said: "I don't associate with the whole crowd of gangs. . . . Everybody's trying to be a gangster, everybody wants to go hard, but my friends aren't like that. . . . Our principal takes pretty good care of us, makes sure we're safe."

Herrera's father, Herbert Jackson Jr., said the shooting was "horrific" but added that he still felt safe sending his daughter to Flowers. "I think the principal is doing an outstanding job," he said.

But some other parents, led by Walter J. Searcy, president of the parent-teacher association, are demanding strong measures. "They're doing the best they can with what little resources they have, but they're ineffective," Searcy said. "Parents have to bear a great deal of this. . . . If our children learned respect at home, we wouldn't have had what happened."

The school has one of the lowest rates of habitual truancy in Prince George's -- 3.8 percent, well below other high schools'. Yet county police reported filing 113 truant reports involving the school between Aug. 20 and Oct. 26, with 55 cases resulting in an arrest.

In the most obvious measure of security -- student suspensions -- Flowers is slightly below average for county high schools: The school reported 641 suspensions during the 2005-06 school year, the latest year for which suspension data are available from the Maryland State Department of Education. The majority -- 503 -- were for disrespect, insubordination and disruption and other minor offenses. The school reported 110 suspensions for threats and fighting, 10 for bringing weapons to school, three arson, fire and explosives-related suspensions, and one for a sex offense.

Nobles-Jones said the school had an investigative counselor, another person assigned from the central security office and three security assistants, as well as a sheriff's deputy, to keep order. Searcy has said he wants at least 10 security officers, but Nobles-Jones said that is unnecessary and would draw resources from other schools that need them.

Nobles-Jones acknowledged seeing "PPC" and "BSR" graffiti tags in the school, referring to the Palmer Park Crew and Brightseat Road -- two groups students say have had occasional clashes. They operate in neighborhoods west of the Beltway near FedEx Field, but Nobles-Jones said that if her students were involved in criminal activity in or out of the school, she had received no evidence of it.

"They are not students from rival communities," Nobles-Jones said. "We have occurrences in our school that happen in every school in America that is public.

"I believe what is going on is part of public hysteria."

Whether hysteria or gangs, a girl is dead and Crystal Gray is torn about what to do with her daughter at Flowers. "She's an honor student. She's in Chinese, which she loves. I would like to let her finish Chinese I, but with things escalating like they are, I don't know," she said. "I don't have any private high schools to go to. For parents like myself, what do we do?"

Staff writer Candace Rondeaux contributed to this report.