The tag-team approach to gangs

Busch wants police to inform schools and teachers to hold 'interventions'

House Speaker Michael E. Busch (D-Anne Arundel) sees a virtual wall Maryland lawmakers have built around schools to protect the state's students.

They're surrounded by drug-free zones with stiff penalties for dealers. There's a hard perimeter banning sex offenders. Teachers and coaches must undergo background checks to step into classrooms or onto ballfields. Even parents must sign in to visit their children.

So, to Busch, it's baffling that principals, teachers and police willingly let members of violent gangs lurk in the state's middle and high schools, roam hallways and look for recruits.

The beating death in May of 14-year-old Christopher Jones, who, according to his family, had mistakenly found himself caught between rival Crofton area gangs, has exposed a deep flaw in the state's ability to protect students, Busch says, and has hardened his resolve to do something potentially controversial to change it.

Last week, Busch met behind closed doors with nearly two dozen state lawmakers, police, prosecutors and one of Gov. Martin O'Malley's key public safety advisers to begin crafting a bill sure to become a focal point when lawmakers return to the capital early next year.

Busch wants police to share intelligence on suspected student gang members with teachers and school administrators. And he wants schools to act on the information. He wants teachers to conduct "interventions," confront parents and enroll students in activities and programs to put them on a path intended to lead them away from the streets and potentially violent gang activity.

The problem? As Montgomery County State's Attorney John McCarthy said at a hearing in Annapolis last month, gang membership is not a crime. So, having police identify to schools any students suspected of gang involvement -- and then having schools act on that information -- is potentially fraught with legal land mines and privacy concerns. McCarthy was among those at Thursday's meeting.

"Everybody acknowledges there's a problem and sees ways to solve it," Busch said, adding that he's confident school privacy laws have sufficient flexibility to allow the state to address any concerns and to get a useful dialogue going between schools and police.

"Gangs, by their very nature, are going to fester; they become growth industries within school systems," Busch said. "I think you have to be able to go out and identify that and find other alternatives for them besides participation in gangs."

-- Aaron Davis