A grieving Seattle community considers ways to keep Garfield kids safe

Appollonia Washington is worried about the kids in her Central District community. An afternoon drive-by shooting in October shattered the front window of her neighborhood preschool, A 4 Apple Learning Center. A man outside had multiple gunshot wounds. No children were harmed. 

But Washington and her fellow Central District neighborhood safety group members know there’s more to do to protect their kids. They have been meeting with Garfield students throughout the school year to gather their concerns and ideas for safety. 

“Many of them said they don’t feel safe in their school,” she said.  

Gun violence cast a particularly dark shadow over their spring. In between school plays, prom and graduation, two Garfield students were shot.

In March, a female student was shot in the leg outside the school during a drive-by. 

In early June, student Amarr Murphy-Paine, 17, was killed on school grounds. The shooting occurred in broad daylight during the school’s lunch hour. Murphy-Paine was reportedly trying to break up a fight. No arrests have been made in this case. 

And while everyone wants students at Garfield to be and feel safe, there is not yet consensus on which security measures should be in place this fall. Some want law enforcement stationed on campus, which would require repealing or creating an exception to a 4-year-old district ban on school resource officers. Others vehemently oppose armed security, stressing it could end up harming students. For now, district officials are taking the summer to weigh the options.

“Students [are] saying they certainly want to feel safe, [but] they’re not sure that a sworn officer carrying a firearm is exactly the definition of safety,” said Fred Podesta, Seattle Public Schools’ Chief of Operations. “We’re interested in what exactly that would look like. It’s going to be the subject of discussion in the coming few weeks.” 

Security tightened after the June shooting. Students were required to stay on campus during the school day. The district sent more of its security specialists to the school and contracted four additional security officers to roam the perimeter of the campus. Seattle Police Department officers also increased patrols in the area. 

But the increased security at the school expired Friday, the last day of school. 

Seattle Public Schools chief of operations Fred Podesta said the district will have updates this summer about what, if any, of these measures will be extended. 

Ideas to improve safety: Police, text warnings, internships

Demands for law enforcement came swiftly after the shooting from the school’s parent-teacher organization. The group is proposing a “pilot program” to reinstate school resource officers and adding mental health professionals at the school this fall. 

“We need to explore this and bring it back in a nuanced way and make sure we are not actively harming any student in any measure we’re bringing back,” said Alicia Spanswick, co-president of the Garfield PTSA. Specifically, she acknowledged the negative experiences Black and Indigenous students have had with members of law enforcement. 

It’s been four years since the Seattle School Board instituted a ban against officers stationed inside schools, citing the need to create a safer environment for Black children. 

Before the 2020 moratorium on officers stationed inside schools, five schools had had police officers, including Garfield, since 2005. In the wake of George Floyd’s murder by police, student activists and School Board members pushed for the program to come to an end. 

Many in the city still believe that was the right call.

“Cops would not have prevented this school shooting,” said Natalya McConnell, co-founder of the Seattle Student Union, a group of student activists that has demanded more therapists in schools. “The solution is to limit the amount of guns, and increase the access to mental health professionals. Students, instead of being angry, can talk to a trusted adult, and help them cope with their anger, and those two measures will help with shootings. Cops won’t.”

Jackson Hatch, a rising senior at Garfield, says he understands the arguments for and against increasing police presence on the campus. Beyond the involvement of law enforcement, he says the school still has underfunded security needs, including a way to alert students about danger when they’re not inside the building. 

On the day of the shooting, he said many students didn’t know what was going on. He was in a car with his friends, having just come back from lunch, and saw cars zooming away from campus. They had to ask someone walking by what had happened. 

“It’s crazy to have danger happening so close to you,” said Hatch, who launched a fundraiser for school security in the days after the shooting. He’s raised more than $13,000 so far, and he says he’s turned the money over to the school’s principal. He said he’s also working with another student and a teacher to develop a text message alert system for students.

Based on her time talking with Garfield students before this latest incident, Washington, the preschool center owner, confirmed that some want the return of a trusted school resource officer. Others, she said, want more mental health providers at the school. Students also requested more opportunities to learn and grow, like internships, jobs and career readiness support. 

“They have no safe havens to go to be themselves and thrive,” Washington said.

Planning for fall

Seattle School Board president Liza Rankin said she is expecting a clear plan to be in place by fall to improve student safety. Rankin said Seattle school Superintendent Brent Jones would need to show community buy-in and evidence that the strategies used would increase student safety. 

“Personally, the data I’ve seen on school resource officers show that they do not increase student safety,” Rankin said. “At the same time, I expect the superintendent to be talking to the community to discuss it. If we got a clear message that the community wants it, I don’t think the board would reject it.” 

To prevent another shooting, Rankin said, it would require reducing youth access to guns, a problem beyond the reach of the school district. She said she’s also hearing a lot from constituents about a need to teach kids nonviolent conflict resolution.

Odis Johnson Jr., executive director of the Johns Hopkins Center for Safe and Healthy Schools, confirmed that research shows school resource officers aren’t particularly effective at deterring armed attackers. 

“I think there’s just this disconnect with the public and thinking that officers are going to be helpful in that case,” Johnson said. “Officers are first responders. They are not first preventers.”

Johnson said new research is expected to be published soon suggesting that restorative justice practices — people in conflict discussing harmful behaviors, building relationships and committing to a mutually satisfactory resolution to the problem — are effectively curbing school violence. 

Even if the Seattle Police Department was to send a school resource officer back to Garfield, it would only be with lots of community input, said Sue Rahr, the city’s interim police chief. 

“We have to work together to build a job description,” Rahr said. “Once we understand what their concerns are, hopefully they’ll be willing to try a different approach.”

Repairing relationships between police officers, families, schools and community members will be key, she said. 

“What I’ve watched happen in this investigation is a lack of cooperation with some witnesses and some community members,” she said. “This could move a lot faster if we had relationships that already existed in the community.” 

District officials say they’re in conversations with the police, the city’s students and community organizations to determine the best path forward.  

In light of the shooting, Seattle Public Schools officials are evaluating security needs at all Seattle schools. 

“We’ve traditionally been mostly focused on what’s going on in the building and with our students or keeping the buildings secure,” Podesta said. “Now, if it’s the parking lot, or across the street, or the bus stop, you know, how are we going to deal with that? That’s the question we’re asking ourselves.” 

Whatever the final solution, research shows involving the community in the work is critically important. 

Ali Rowhani-Rahbar studies community violence interventions at the Firearm Injury and Policy Research Program at the University of Washington. Researchers there focus on reducing the risk of becoming a victim of or committing an act of gun violence by helping people improve their lives. That might mean learning to drive, finding housing or getting a job — anything that will allow people to stay out of tense situations where guns might be present. 

Rowhani-Rahbar said community workers who help with these kinds of daily life improvements play a critical role in preventing youth gun violence. 

“That link to the community is critical because these young people are going to spend a lot of time within the community,” he said. “Without that link, I think we are going to miss a very large part of the story.”