ALEXANDRIA, Va. — City and school officials spent roughly a third of a joint subcommittee meeting Monday on student gatherings at the Bradlee Shopping Center, with a councilman saying the problem is decades old and predictable and that he does not want to be discussing it again next fall.
The discussion was not on the agenda. It grew out of a slide in the division's back-to-school presentation listing collaboration with the city on safety measures and increased police presence at high school sporting events.
"I think anybody in this room who has been in this community for a couple of years could have probably bet money online to say, is there going to be an issue after the first game? Yes. And won a lot of money," Councilman John Taylor Chapman said. "And that's not the way this should be able to happen."
Police dispersed a large crowd at the shopping center after Alexandria City High School's first home football game on Aug. 28. An officer was assaulted, though the officer did not seek medical treatment and did not pursue charges, and no arrests were made. Principal Michael Burch told families the next morning that a group of individuals had caused a significant disruption.
Mayor Alyia Gaskins said something officers told the city afterward stayed with her.
"One of the things they said was that they weren't able to get relief until your administrators came and were able to call people by name," she said. "I think if we think about the type of city we want to have, I don't know that we want the answer to be every time young people gather, we send more police."
Gaskins said the city is already getting more calls from Bradlee asking for police. "I don't want this to be a situation where that's every time our response," she said.
The morning walks stopped
Gaskins asked whether ACPS still sends staff to walk Bradlee in the mornings and steer students toward campus, a practice she remembered from a presentation about two years ago.
"That practice is not continuing," said Pierrette Finney, who oversees teaching and learning for the division. She said the high school's focus is on campus grounds and getting students into the building, and that administrators are not at Bradlee during the school day either.
City Manager James Parajon said the arrangement puts the burden in the wrong place.
"Our officers, we're patrolling 15 square miles," he said. "This is really a student — you have a policy to limit who can go off campus, and yet that's a normal occurrence."
He said officers cannot do what administrators can. "The student will recognize the administrator at a much different level than it would a police officer," Parajon said, adding that he was not suggesting the job is easy for administrators either.
Finney said students swipe in through a system called Minga and face consequences under the student code of conduct when they arrive late. Pulling administrators off campus during the day, she said, creates a safety gap inside the building.
An after-action meeting Friday
Finney said the city, police, DASH and ACPS met after the Aug. 28 game to review what happened. The high school drew up measures for the Sept. 25 homecoming game and put them in place early, for the Sept. 10 game, she said. ACPS, city staff, police and DASH meet again Friday to assess how that went before homecoming.
"We do thank you for your partnership and collaboration," Finney said.
Chapman said the work is happening too late in the year.
"Respectfully, I don't want to be here again," he said. "Next school year, first game, whatever we have to do, however we have to do it, I don't want to have to debrief again."
He said the city keeps reacting to something it can see coming. "It's like a wave coming down and hitting us in the face, and we're watching the wave every single year. And we need to get ahead of that wave. However we do that, I implore you, let's figure out how to get people together in June versus in September."
Chapman said the stakes are higher than inconvenience. "I think we have seen people die, frankly, students pass away, because of activity in this space," he said.
On May 24, 2022, police were called to a large group fight in the 3600 block of King Street at about 12:26 p.m. One person was critically injured and died at a hospital. He was Luis Hernandez, 18, an Alexandria City High School senior, according to police and the Alexandria Times. A 16-year-old Alexandria boy was arrested a week later and charged with murder. ACPS moved high school students to virtual learning the day after the stabbing so the school community could grieve.
Parents, and consequences
School Board Chair Christopher Harris said the conversation had left out families.
"We need these kids to go home and they should know how to conduct themselves at a football game," Harris said. "It's a privilege to come to these games. It's a privilege to take part in these after-school extracurricular activities. And I think our parents need to understand that bad behavior creates bad results and repercussions."
Finney said the high school has been working with counselors on messaging to students and parents about conduct at and after games, and that consequences can include removal from games or after-school activities.
"We definitely don't want to create a pipeline where inappropriate behavior leads to police activity," she said.
Gaskins said the issue is both the message and the messenger. An instruction from police "is coming with a different type of enforcement than I think a school-related consequence," she said. She recalled an earlier model involving the school division and the police department working in teams.
"The more we can be giving the right message from the right messenger with the right level of enforcement, it's gonna be appropriate," she said.
Finney offered to bring Burch to a future meeting to describe the high school's approach.
What happens next
Bradlee is private property, and the shopping center's owners were not part of Monday's discussion. Neither was DASH, though the transit agency has taken part in the after-action meetings. A DASH stop at the McDonald's draws students in the morning, Finney said, and the high school has been urging them to use the stop in front of the school instead.
No one at the meeting said whether anyone was disciplined after the Aug. 28 game, or whether any students were barred from events, a step Burch raised in his letter to families. Nor did anyone describe what the measures put in place for last Thursday's game were, or whether they worked.
Gaskins added student presence at Bradlee to the subcommittee's list of follow-up items, alongside crossing guards, city approvals and commercial driver's license training.
The staff after-action meeting is Friday. Homecoming is Sept. 25. The subcommittee meets next on Oct. 19.
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Ryan Belmore is an Alexandria resident and the founder and publisher of The Alexandria Brief. Send tips, feedback, and story ideas to ryan@alexandriabrief.com.
