Centinela Schools to Prohibit Use of Pagers by Students

Drug dealers who use electronic pagers to expand their contacts to school campuses are the target of a policy recently passed by the Centinela Valley Union High School District.

At the Board of Trustees meeting last month, the board voted to prohibit students from carrying pagers on campus, district spokesman Dan Finnegan said.

Police and school officials say pagers, also known as beepers, are used by buyers and sellers of illegal drugs to communicate.

Although district school officials have not had any reports of pagers on the campuses this year, Supt. McKinley Nash said he is “sure that they are out there.”

“This is sort of a pro-active measure,” Nash said.

Confiscated Pagers

It has been a longstanding practice at the district’s schools for administrators to question students carrying pagers and for pagers to be confiscated. The board decision makes that practice official school policy, Nash said.

The Centinela Valley district is not the first South Bay school district to ban pagers on campus. Inglewood, El Segundo and Torrance school districts prohibit students from having pagers on campus, school officials said. In several of the high schools only one or two pagers have been sighted each year. But in other schools--such as Inglewood High School, where 35 were confiscated in the last school year--the problem is greater.

Other districts in the South Bay have had no problem with pagers, officials said.

Dealers use the beepers to contact buyers the moment a new shipment of drugs arrives, said Sgt. Tim Beard of the Sheriff’s Department’s narcotics division.

It allows the dealers to sell the drugs faster and reduces the chances of being caught, he said.

When gangs are involved, new members usually wear beepers so they can be contacted to make drug deliveries, Beard said.

“If (gangs) are organized, they will use their underlings to make the deliveries,” said Beard, who has seen gang members as young as 13 wearing pagers.

More Flexibility

The devices also give drug dealers more flexibility, said Bill Stelzner, a consultant on attendance and administrative services for the county Office of Education.

“Drug dealers are much more mobile now,” he said. “They are not just staying in their rock houses anymore.”

Stelzner said Los Angeles school officials have banned beepers on most campuses where drug sales are heavy.

Although beepers can be a sign that youths are buying or selling drugs, Stelzner said school officials and police usually “already have a pretty good idea of which kids are involved with drug use or gang activity.”

Beard agreed, adding that pagers give police probable cause to question youths. “You see a kid walking down the street and you know that he is not a doctor or a lawyer, so you follow him and question him,” he said.

Beard said police have seen the use of beepers for drug sales grow significantly in the past year.

Sometimes youngsters who want to be perceived by their friends as drug dealers carry pagers, Beard said. “You’ll have the case of a ‘wanna-be’ drug dealer, whose beeper may not even work.”

Beard said that whether a youngster with a pager is a “wanna-be” or not, he or she will be suspected of wrongdoing.

In the Inglewood school district, which is in an area where drug and gang activities are more prevalent than elsewhere in the South Bay, school officials closely scrutinize students with pagers.

“We have almost taken the assumption that these students are viewed as guilty until proven innocent,” said Hollis Dillon, director of special services for the school district.

District policy has been to confiscate the pager, contact police to find out if the beeper is stolen and call the student’s parents, Dillon said.

He said part of the battle against drugs on campus is to make parents aware of the warning signals that their children are involved with drugs. He said he is surprised that some parents are still not suspicious when their children carry pagers.

“I would hope that parents would see their kids with this device and would inquire about it,” he said. “Students simply don’t have the need to carry around a beeper.”

At Morningside High School in the Inglewood district, Principal Jeraldine Martin said she has confiscated five pagers in the last school year. The district’s strict policy has reduced the sightings of pagers on campus from previous years, she said.

Tamotsu Ikeda, principal of Gardena High School, said he has confiscated three or four pagers in the last year. He said beepers in the possession of students “gives us a good indication of drug dealing.”

“If you don’t want to be suspected of wrongdoing,” Ikeda said, “don’t bring these things on campus.”