LAS VEGAS (KTNV) — A politician and Rancho High School teacher is calling on local leaders to implement a police presence in the area surrounding the school after the recent deadly beating of a student just outside campus.
Assemblyman Reuben D'Silva, who is a Rancho High alum himself, said the school campus is a safe harbor in the dangerous area that immediately surrounds it. He believes that had the brawl between Jonathan Lewis and several other students happened on campus, things might have turned out differently.
"They know they can't really fight on campus. I honestly and wholeheartedly believe that had this fight taken place on Rancho's grounds, we would have been able to immediately deal with it and Jonathan would have been alive, because of our response times that we have here at Rancho High School," D'Silva said. "So now, many of our young people are moving off campus, especially when they coordinate these sort of meetups to fight."
That's why he is calling for a police presence in the area immediately surrounding Rancho High's campus. He said while they may be able to keep tabs on things on campus, the violence is growing just outside of school grounds.
"It's a known place where students go and actually have these coordinated fights that turn into brawls. It's not the first one that's taken place in that particular alleyway. So my call really is for some patrolling of the area, just during arrival and dismissal times. I'm talking about maybe a 30 to 40-minute time frame," he said.
"Unfortunately, fights likely happen outside of many school campuses. Do you propose this sort of solution for all campuses and do you think that's even feasible given the staffing shortages a lot of police agencies are facing, including Metro?" Good Morning Las Vegas anchor Anjali Patel asked the assemblyman.
D'Silva said he thinks what he's calling for is justified.
"I think we have to consider this. It's not just an issue of staffing shortages. I know across the board there are problems with bringing in teachers, bringing in law enforcement, bringing in folks to serve as hall monitors and security personnel in our school and around our schools. It's an issue. But another issue is the fact that we've seen an uptick in violence, like serious violence, within our young people," D'Silva said.
D'Silva said he has contacted local leaders and Metro's Northeast Area Command, hoping to see some movement on his request soon.
"It doesn't have to be a massive reform or some big program we have to start. I'm just saying that in some of the areas that we have these long-standing data points, where we've had fights and brawls and other violent activity, we should just have a presence there," D'Silva said.
When it comes to changing this culture of violence among students outside of Rancho High, the assemblyman said it's not a simple fix.
"That's a really good question. I don't really have the answer to that right now. It's a complex question. We need to bring teachers into the mix, administrators, social workers..." he said.
No matter the path forward, D'Silva said this tragedy will forever change Rancho High.
"This has been a shocking, shocking last few weeks here on this campus. It's hard to digest. It's hard to comprehend. Even I'm having a hard time still processing what took place and just the extent to how many young people, our students, were involved in this," D'Silva said.
