A memorial to slain student Salvador Granillo outside Garfield High School
Seattle Public Schools already said it was stepping up security and Seattle Police presence around Garfield High School.
Social media posts and reports of non-students coming onto the 23rd Ave campus looking for trouble to end last week have police increasing the efforts around the school.
SPD says its “increased presence” around Garfield comes after online messages.
“An unknown youth local gang was reportedly targeting students at the school and had posted on social media that they planned to ‘target’ several students after the sixth period,” SPD’s brief on the incident reads. “While no specific threats were made and it was unclear if weapons were involved, several officers logged in for a directed patrol at the high school to increase police presence.”
The SPD update comes amid reports from faculty that a group of three or four non-students entered the campus last week wearing ski masks. It is not clear if the individuals were armed. No confrontation or assaults were reported.
Garfield and SPS had already announced increased security at the school and other area campuses. CHS reported here on the launch this spring of a new district-wide “visitor management system” involving cameras, plus increased private security and SPD presence outside the campuses.
Gun violence has taken a painful toll on Garfield’s class of 2025. Senior Salvador “Junior” Granillo was shot and killed at a late night party last week in Yakima.
Last June, 17-year-old Amarr Murphy-Paine was shot and killed during a lunchtime altercation in the school’s parking lot.
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When will be enough for SPS, parents and the community?
Get metal detectors, armed security, patrols on the grounds, no masks and cameras everywhere if they need more.
Why a school that is constantly threatened like this is not treated more like the TSA is beyond me.
Paid for how when budgets are already in crisis and no one seems to be prepared for the worse to come? You can’t will these things into existence. (BTW, it’s been shown time and again none of this will help. It just shifts the danger)
This won’t help? It at least shifts the danger away from the school, so females on the soccer team won’t get shot across from the school like happened last year, not to mention the fatal shooting of the football player in the Garfield parking lot. Lack of policing, as directed by the progressive school leadership last year, caused it all.
I went to school in LA in the 90s when gangs violence in schools was heavy. All the schools with the worst problems, like Dorsey High, had metal detectors, pat downs, and extra security and rules. If anything that made it worse. If they decide they are coming for you they will. So they catch up with you at the football game or walking out front of the school. Because you are likely in a group in these scenarios, there are a high number of innocent casualties.
metal detectors… for the gangs hanging out outside the school? no masks for… the students being targeted?
They are gangs. They are teenage gang memebers at that. Teenagers should be in high school, and NOT ON SOCIAL MEDIA. But it’s ok because advertises really like teenage high school violence, really blows up the comment sections.
are you really suggesting that social media causes gang affiliation, and CHS is covering this because violence drives clicks? be serious.
Yes, And so does pop culture, and social media and social media influencers. It’s a tool, used by people with unsavory agendas, and advertisers know it. And they made no attempts to stop it. Remember when Mark Zuckerberg “protected free speech”?
So yeah, Gang violence is marketable. End of class!
You’re not wrong, but the issue is the large companies like BlackRock and Vanguard that own large stakes in the media and for-profit prisons.
https://raprehab.com/facts-about-hip-hop-and-prison-for-profit/
I’m grateful that CHSblog is covering this and making us aware of the reactionary response of security posturing.
My concern is this is power flexing as a direct preamble to something worse.
The gangs have the community terrorized. Nobody will talk to cops. There have been dozens of eye witnesses to some shootings. Nobody comes forward.
Unless we break up gangs nothing will change. This will require abandoning “alternatives to sentencing” and going back to investigating, prosecuting and convicting and sentencing gang members.
Reformed justice and alternatives to jail are getting black lives killed by other black lives. Ironic.
Yeah these kids are broke and bored and influenced to do crimes in their precious youth before the courts charge them as adults. Teenager who use guns while commuting a crime, 8-12 Years. An adult who uses a gun 20 to life. So you see, O.G. Be asking the youth to do some time for them. And they are so young and groomed.
I’m sorry Tim, but why not death penalty or immediate extradition to Ecuador’s CECOT? You really think there’s a material difference between your idea and that? Really?
Would be great to know how Community Passageways (23rd and Jackson) is engaging with the youth in the community and at WMS and GHS; and how the community diversion and violence prevention organizations are generally coordinating with SPS and SPD. I think I’ve seen folks in the bright jackets only once over the last 2 years between the hours of 3-6pm… meanwhile the latest City audit again said the City is not coordinating across public safety programs.
And what’s the City’s plan for the summer? We all know the general cyclical patterns to gun violence and how “at-risk” youth become more at-risk when they’re not in school.
https://www.kuow.org/stories/seattle-nonprofit-brings-back-in-person-foot-patrols-to-central-district