Troubling on-campus incident sparks concerns over LAUSD's move to defund police department

CBS News

a day ago

Years after the Los Angeles Unified School District defunded its police department, a troubling event has once again sparked concerns that campuses are not as safe as they should be for students and their families.
Parent Elizabeth Funes-Lara says her injustice began in March, when she stopped at a magnet-school bus stop outside of Manual Arts High School to pick up her 11-year-old son. Her other child, a two-year-old boy, was riding in the backseat.
As she tried to pull out of the area, Funes-Lara says a black SUV suddenly backed up to try and block her in. The incident was captured on the school's surveillance system and was being recorded on the mother's cell phone.
"I know she's going to do something, so I'm recording," she recalled. The video of the incident shows the female driver, an LAUSD Safe Passage Ambassador, walking straight for her window before a brief verbal confrontation that quickly escalated.
"She punched me and scratched my face," Funes-Lara said. "I'm just in disbelief that someone who works at school with children is capable of doing that."
She says that aside from the injuries, her children and their safety are her primary concerns.
"All that screaming, for him it was traumatizing," she said. "I try not to cry, because I don't want to scare him, but I don't think they should be witnessing someone hitting their mother."
Gil Gamez with the Los Angeles School Police Association says that his officers used to patrol the school where the incident took place. He says that if one of them did what the district's worker did, they would be in prison.
But since the school board defunded the department, cutting the budget by nearly 20% and its officers by 33% in 2022, police have been pushed off many campuses and replaced with private community groups with a program called "Safe Passage."
"They moved police officers off-campus, they moved everybody out of the way and they gave these security guard companies full access to the students on and off campus, without any training, without any mentorship, for sure without a police officer next to them," he said. "They don't know how to handle things, and some of these individuals are formerly incarcerated individuals."
Gamez pointed to another man who worked with high schoolers, who also has a criminal record. That man once revealed at an LAUSD board meeting that he has served 21 years of a 30 years to life sentence.
Court records show that the same woman who attacked Funes-Lara also served jail time for violating her probation following a forgery conviction back in 2018.
"I don't see why LAUSD would hire her," Gamez said. "She should not be in a coveted position of a school security personnel around a child's school with a record like that."
He says that no police department, including the Los Angeles Police Department, Los Angeles Sheriff's Department, and the Los Angeles School Police Department would hire someone like this, because it's unethical.
While there have been numerous incidents involving guns on campus, fights and stabbings this year, LAUSD's data shows that, overall, the violent crime numbers are down compared to the last year. However, the number of rapes and aggravated assaults have spiked.
The woman who allegedly assaulted Funes-Lara works for a community organization called Boys 2 Gentlemen.
The district now pays Keith Linton, who owns Boys 2 Gentlemen, more than $500,000 a year for his 60 employees that service the nearly 25,000 kids at 20 LAUSD schools, he says. KCAL News has profiled his program before, and that story can be viewed here.
He also says that, while his program aims to help provide safe passage to students and their families, what happened to Funes-Lara should never have occurred.
"What should happen now is what we did. That employee was terminated, that employee will never have a chance with LAUSD, and what we've done is, we've revved up our training," Linton said. "There should be no employee on any campus that works for me that does what that employee did."
Though he says it's never certain what could happen from one day to the next, he's dedicated to his cause of making sure campuses remain safe.
"I can't tell you today that out of my north of 60 employees, that tomorrow there's not going to be an incident with a kid, or a verbal exchange with a parent, but I cant tell you, as a leader, I'm out here 20 hours a day and I'm at every school."
He's a former LAPD officer who says he does train all of his employees and does run background checks. Even so, he says, nothing came back on the woman involved, who now faces battery charges for the incident.
There is also a warrant out for her arrest after she missed her first court date.
When asked if parents should still trust his system, Linton said, "Yes," and that people should refer to his website as opposed to the one incident that took place.
Funes-Lara is unsure, still looking back to the recording and reliving the traumatizing memories. She has now hired an attorney after saying the district should have protected her and her family.
LAUSD would not provide someone to be interviewed for this story and only answered approximately 10% of the written questions KCAL submitted to the district. They did not respond to any questions about the attack on school property or address it directly. A district spokesperson also claims LA school police are now "fully staffed," but the union president says that is flatly false and that the number of police who are actually on patrol is down dramatically compared to previous years.
Here is the statement from LAUSD:
The Los Angeles Unified Board of Education has committed to implementing a Community Based Safety Pilot (CBSP) program to address concerns in the community about student safety. Safe Passage is one of the pilot initiatives included in the program approved by the Board in 2021. These CBSP efforts – alongside partnerships with law enforcement, governmental and community agencies – reflect the District's commitment to leverage all available resources to support student safety.
Currently, 77 of our 1500+ schools take advantage of the Safe Passage program offerings by approximately 30 Safe Passage vendors.
Los Angeles Unified continually conducts periodic assessments and monitoring of the Safe Passage pilot initiative to evaluate what is working well and what needs to be strengthened. Some recent actions taken in response to our ongoing assessment include:
On December 16, 2024, Los Angeles Unified issued an updated Bulletin for vendors regarding criminal background compliance requirements (BUL-3872.1 Fingerprinting and Criminal Background Compliance for Contractors).*
On February 26, 2025, we trained Principals on the new bulletin to ensure coherence.
On May 30, updated guidance was disseminated to Regions.
On June 2, 2025, additional guidance was disseminated to school administrators.
As part of our ongoing review of all of our safety programs, on April 9, 2025, the Superintendent requested that a comprehensive review process of the current Safe Passage program be initiated, including a review of vendor contracts, their implementation, vendors' protocols for hiring, the training required by vendors for their employees, and the data-driven impact of these services on our communities.
Our review is ongoing however, we can highlight the following:
After a jump in incidents immediately following the pandemic, we are seeing improvement in the data regarding on-campus incidents Districtwide.
Incident Report Type*
July 01, 2019 -
May 31, 2020**
July 01, 2022 -
May 31, 2023
July 01, 2023 -
May 31, 2024
July 01, 2024 -
May 31, 2025
Suicide Risk
5,641
9,384
9,218
8,461
Fighting/Physical Aggression
1,941
4,063
5,513
5,403
Threat
1,381
2,893
3,544
3,544
Illegal/Controlled Substance
688
1,541
1,786
1,735
Weapons
513
1,121
1,018
857
We are seeing improvements in our Student Experience Survey data, which is also reflected in a recent GPSN report.
And we see improvements in data among those students in the 77 schools receiving Safe Passage services who report "I Feel Safe in the Neighborhood Around This School".
Finally, Los Angeles Unified has filled all vacancies with the Los Angeles Unified Police Department and now employs a fully staffed department.
*Please note that pursuant to Education Code Section 42125.1, and as required under the District's contracts with these vendors, any employee of contractor who interacts with pupils outside of the immediate supervision of a parent/guardian or school employee, is required to be fingerprinted for purposes of a background check conducted by the California Department of Justice. District contractors are required to provide a certification confirming that such employees have completed such a background check prior to engaging with any District students.
*When appropriate, the District has taken action to terminate a vendor contract and, in the case of Manual Arts, a vendor immediately terminated the employment of the individual in question.