Santa Monica police say Santa Monica-Malibu Unified School District Board Member Oscar de la Torre “nearly caused a riot” by bringing two alleged gang members onto the Santa Monica High campus after recent fights occurred at the school.
By Hans Laetz/Special to the Malibu Times
Santa Monica politics and racial gang issues are boiling over in the Santa Monica-Malibu Unified School District, after school board member Oscar de la Torre was nearly arrested Wednesday for bringing two alleged adult gang leaders onto the racially charged Santa Monica High School campus.
A Santa Monica Police Department officer alleged the school board member and the two gang members “nearly caused a riot” in the middle the school’s quad during the lunch hour. The incident marred the uneasy calm that followed a handful of fights between black and Mexican-American students that broke out nearly two weeks ago.
The Santa Monica police chief publicly rebuked de la Torre, and asked the school district if it allows board members to bring incendiary guests on campus without permission from principals, or notification to police officers stationed at the school.
During the Wednesday incident, black students on the campus complained to administrators and police that de la Torre’s guests were intimidating and threatening black students some five days after widely scattered racial fighting had broken out at the 3,355-student school.
De la Torre did not return calls to The Malibu Times. But he told a Santa Monica newspaper the police allegations are “slanderous.”
De la Torre told The Lookout that he brought the men on campus in an effort to convince gang members they could change their lives and forsake gangs. The two men had signed in as de la Torre’s guests at the high school’s office.
The SMPD report obtained by The Malibu Times alleges that de la Torre’s guests wore tank tops, were covered with “mural-like” gang tattoos, “were holding their hands at their belt line, and their heads were tilted back in a gangster type of lean,” and were known by both high school students and police to be violent gang leaders.
“This was absolutely a display of gang affiliation tattoos,” said SMPD Lt. Frank Fabrega in a telephone interview. “It doesn’t take a brain surgeon to figure out what was going on here.”
SMPD Chief James T. Butts Jr. said police were shocked to find the gangsters in the midst of the tense campus, without district permission but in the escort of the board member, who works for the City of Santa Monica’s Pico Family and Youth Center in one of the city’s toughest neighborhoods.
In a letter to the school board, the SMPD chief said de la Torre mocked police officers and was demonstrably rude to them in the midst of a large lunchtime crowd.
“When an elected official representing the SMMUSD behaves in this manner, in front of students, it makes our job immensely difficult,” Butts wrote in a letter to the school board obtained by The Malibu Times.
SMPD Sgt. Joaquin Vega said he had to repeatedly ask, and then repeatedly order, de la Torre and his two guests to leave the campus under state law that allows police to prevent the endangering of students on campus.
Vega’s report, also obtained by The Malibu Times, said de la Torre alternately taunted and laughed at the pair of SMPD uniformed officers in front of two large groups of combative students.
Vega said the presence of the Hispanic gang members was causing black students to threaten to “bring our people too” to the campus.
District officials are withholding comment on the behavior of the board member. Assistant principal Greg Runyan was quoted by police as thanking them for diffusing the situation.
Kathy Wisnicki, the only SMMUSD board member from Malibu, spoke only after saying, “I want to make it clear that I am not commenting on the behavior of another board member.”
She stressed that the initial fights that put the campus on edge were not gang-related, and were handled expertly by the district and police.
“Any fighting is intolerable,” she said in a telephone interview. “But situations like this simply will occur on a campus with nearly 4,000 students in this day.
“I think the district response and the police response was exactly appropriate,” she said, referring to both the initial fights and the de la Torre incident. “I do not think that Malibu residents have anything to fear. The vast majority of students, probably 95 percent, were not even aware that any of this was going on.”
The district cannot say how many Malibu students attend Santa Monica High, but the district allows its residents to attend any of its three high schools.
In past years, dozens of Malibu students have chosen Santa Monica for its bigger campus environment and curriculum.