Clark County School District Police Lt. Bryan Zink, seen while being interviewed in April 2022 at Mojave high school in North Las Vegas, encourages students, parents, teachers and staff to follow the “see something, say something” principle about weapons in schools, including making an anonymous report to the district’s SafeVoice tip line.
Sunday, March 5, 2023 | 2 a.m.
On a Friday in February, Clark County School District Police arrested a student at Palo Verde High School for bringing a gun to school.
The following Tuesday — the first day students returned to campuses after a three-day weekend — officers nabbed two students and two guns at Eldorado High. And a student with a gun at Mojave High. And one at Escobedo Middle. Two days after that, another at Mack Middle.
The math is startling: Six guns in less than a week.
Clark County School District data show that guns on campus aren’t unusual. Over the past five years, the fewest number of guns that officers have recovered from district property was 18 — in the 2019-20 school year, which was interrupted by the pandemic.
Nobody fired the six recently found guns at school or threatened to use them, said CCSD Police spokesman Lt. Bryan Zink. There hasn’t been a shooting on a CCSD campus in more than four years. But simply having a gun on school grounds is illegal.
School police seize guns that are almost always loaded, and some had rounds in the chamber, Zink said.
“Mostly (students) say they have it for protection, they forgot it was in their backpack or they just brought it to show it off,” he said.
Jamie Bunnell, who leads Nevada’s chapter of the gun violence prevention organization Moms Demand Action, said “it doesn’t take much for it to be jostled in a backpack,” or for another student to take the gun. That guns are in schools at all is terrifying, she said.
Here’s how often CCSD finds guns on campus, and what the district can do about it:
The problem
CCSD Police have confiscated 27 guns to date this school year, which started in August 2022. All but one was a handgun, and most were brought by high school and middle-school students. The last one was found Feb. 23, when the student at Mack Middle brought a handgun.
Nine of the 27 guns were found in February, and this year is well ahead of the pace at which police have confiscated weapons over the past five years, according to historic data the Sun requested from the district. At this point last year, school police had seized 19 firearms, data show. This year’s pace is 42% ahead of that; if the current pace holds, police are on track to confiscate 45 guns before the end of the academic year in May.
District records show that firearms have been taken to schools around the valley, including but not limited to: Cram Middle, Mojave High and Scott Elementary in North Las Vegas; Escobedo Middle in the northwest Centennial Hills; Palo Verde High in Summerlin; Mack Middle and Eldorado High in the east valley; Del Sol and Spring Valley high schools in the central valley; and Basic Academy in Henderson.
CCSD Police track all weapons seized from campuses. Firearms are the least common category. Through Feb. 23, officers had collected 144 knives and 29 BB or air guns — which state law considers weapons when on school grounds — and 34 “other weapons,” a category that includes brass knuckles and clubs.
The last shooting on school property was in September 2018, when a 16-year-old Cheyenne High School student fatally shot an 18-year-old Canyon Springs High School student after school near the Canyon Springs baseball field.
The consequences
CCSD has a zero-tolerance policy when it comes to guns on campus. That means almost everyone who brings a gun to a school is arrested, even younger children.
“If the student is of age, yes — which is over the age of 10,” Zink said. “Absolutely.”
Students typically face charges of being a minor in possession of a firearm, carrying a concealed weapon and possession of a dangerous weapon on school property.
Children under 10 will be referred to Child Protective Services to investigate the child’s home life, Zink said.
Additionally, students who are at least 11 must be recommended for expulsion, even if they did not injure or threaten anyone with the weapon, according to the student code of conduct. While “recommended” is a key word — students have due process; their principal and a higher regional administrator hand up a determination, which can be appealed as high as the School Board — all students involved in dangerous weapon possession cases are subject to expulsion. Students are immediately suspended, pending expulsion proceedings, according to the district’s regulations on expulsion.
“Our goal each day is to ensure students feel safe while attending any Clark County School District school. It should be noted that students possessing weapons, specifically firearms or other dangerous weapons, will be immediately referred to law enforcement,” Superintendent Jesus Jara said in the introduction to the district’s current, 112-page student code of conduct. “We will not tolerate jeopardizing the safety of our students or the Clark County School District community.”
In CCSD, “expulsion” means being removed from school and receiving an “alternative school placement.” State law says that students must be at least 11 years old to be permanently expelled except for “extraordinary circumstances.”
Expulsions for weapons possession last at least one year, according to state law. Students can enroll in special schools for those with disciplinary records, independent or distance education, private school or home school.
CCSD has three “academic centers,” formerly known as opportunity schools and behavioral schools. The district also runs the educational programs inside the area juvenile and adult jails and prisons.
The efforts: Apprehension
Zink said weapons typically have been found in backpacks or on the student’s person. Sometimes officers take weapons from adults during traffic stops on campus. In one instance, a suspect fleeing from an unrelated, after-hours police pursuit by another agency ditched a gun on a school campus, he said.
School police take all firearms, along with loose bullets and casings, to the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department, which runs a task force with the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, for forensic testing to determine if the gun has been previously used in a crime.
No CCSD schools have walk-through metal detectors or routine bag checks to enter campus, and they don’t plan to, Zink said — this would be a logistical nightmare, especially at high schools where enrollment hovers between 2,000 and 3,000 students.
“Just imagine the airport, but at every single high school,” Zink said.
Rather, officers follow up on tips that lead them to armed students. Staff might notice a student acting oddly, or a classmate who has seen a gun will speak up. CCSD Police also take their four trained gun-sniffing dogs for daily “random sniffs” at middle and high schools.
Zink encourages people to follow the “see something, say something” principle, including making an anonymous report to the district’s SafeVoice tip line at (833) 216-7233 or ccsd.net/students/safevoice/.
“We applaud and appreciate the students that do a hard thing,” he said.
It is district practice for each principal to send a notice to parents when a gun has been found on campus.
The efforts: Prevention
CCSD announced last summer that it would dedicate $26.3 million to enhancing physical security measures at Eldorado High, where police seized two guns Feb. 21, and where a student was arrested for attacking and sexually assaulting a teacher in April 2022.
Several schools, like Eldorado, are getting upgraded fencing, single points of entry and surveillance cameras, although the district has declined to publicly itemize the hefty price tags, which total $44 million across 17 high schools.
Staff at all CCSD schools have wearable “instant alert systems,” or panic buttons, that the district implemented starting last summer at a separate cost of more than $8 million.
But School District officials have consistently maintained that metal detectors and airport-style security checks were not going to be arrivingin CCSD schools.
Bunnell from Moms Demand Action said that measures like metal detectors and police in schools were reactive — they address what happens once a gun is already in a school.
What else needs work, she said, is how kids get their hands on guns to begin with — whether through theft or curiosity.
“If you’re a gun owner, as I am, don’t leave your weapon unsecured,” she said.
Bunnell said parents needed to be willing to have awkward but realistic conversations with parents of their kids’ friends, like they would about pool fences or allergens when they have kids over for playdates or slumber parties.
“Responsible gun owners should keep their guns locked up — and if they can’t, they shouldn’t have a gun,” she said.
