Busier intersections, safer crossings found at public schools
By MORNING WOOD Freed Daily Planet Slave
MID-CITY — Two crossing guards at an elite Santa Monica private school were discovered drunk at their posts Thursday morning, concerned parents and administrators said.
The guards at Better Junctions were seen slurring their words and walking jaggedly in the road before morning classes began, according to Principal Steve Morgan.
Roughly 1,200 elementary and middle school students use the two crosswalks to reach the private school each day. No students were hurt in the mishap, though several later said they thought the guards’ behavior was “funny.”
“They couldn’t even hold the ‘Stop’ signs above their heads,” chuckled 7-year-old Amanda Stevens, a fourth grader at Better Junctions. “They were acting really silly. So we just waited for a break in the traffic and then ran across. It was cool.”
Parents weren’t so amused. Several said they would push the well-heeled school to hire crossing guards away from Santa Monica public schools, where the pay is about half.
“We’re not just going to sit back and wait for news,” Marsha Edwards said from her car on Thursday afternoon as she picked up her twin daughters, both third graders. “I think we’re going to try and get those crossing guards from John Muir (Elementary School) or Lincoln (Middle School). They look really professional over there, and the streets are so much busier.”
The guards reportedly had been celebrating a recent pay raise from $29 an hour to $30 an hour by drinking 40-ounce bottles of malt liquor. Two empty bottles were found next to the guards’ folding chairs, which at midday were still laying on their sides beside the school’s two major crosswalks.
Principal Morgan said the crossing guards, an unidentified man and woman, were immediately taken off the street and brought into the nurse’s area, where they napped until sober.
“This behavior is inexcusable,” added Morgan, who was received “too many calls to count” from angry parents all day and into the evening. “The safety of our students comes first.”
The move has been credited to City Councilman Bobby Coniver.
Morgan said the female guard seemed “a little buzzed” but the male guard was “downright hammered” when school staff pulled him from his crosswalk. Back in the school’s nurse area, Morgan said the guards resisted his staff’s help. “(The male guard) kept trying to stand up from his cot,” Morgan said. “He’d say, kind of blending his words together, ‘I’m fine man, really. I’m not drunk. Can I buy you a drink?’”
Both of the guards eventually passed out, Morgan said, sleeping deeply until about 2 p.m., when they were escorted off campus. The incident may have ended their tenure at Better Junctions.
“They won’t guard crosswalks here again,” Morgan said. “I’ll tell you that much right now.”
Despite the bad image the drunkards have excuded onto the city, everything appears to be fine.
“I don’t have any information on that but I can tell you that everything is peachy in this city by the sea,” said City Hall spokeswoman Trudy Ramblinon.
Originally published in the Santa Monica Daily Press print edition on April 1, 2005. Read the original PDF.