THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, November 13, 1994 TAG: 9411130049
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY MIKE MATHER, STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: VIRGINIA BEACH LENGTH: Long : 134 lines
A 20-year-old carpet installer agreed to pick up three friends at Salem High School on his way home from work.
From the driver's seat of his police cruiser, Officer Chris Hession of the Fourth Precinct's Crime Suppression Unit watched the slow line of traffic snake down Sun Devil Drive, the lengthy entrance to Salem High.
At 2:05 p.m. Thursday in the chilling wind and rain, their paths crossed.
The carpet installer left the school in the back of a police car, with his wrists cinched in silver handcuffs.
Hession left the school with another gun.
``That's how it works,'' Hession said. ``Sometimes it's just that simple.''
The gun - a Daisy pellet rifle - found in the back of the suspect's Chevrolet Blazer is treated the same under the law as the stolen Smith & Wesson .44-caliber Magnum revolver Hession and partner Dan Lindemeyer found in Bayside High on Nov. 1. Or the assault rifle Officer J.R. Johnson intercepted in October from a disgruntled Salem student who wanted to find the principal. Or the .45-caliber semiautomatic found in a car stopped in the Salem lot.
The unit's philosophy is simple: Where there are truants, there tends to be trouble.
Sometimes the trouble is vandalism, shoplifting, burglary.
``I'll admit that I wasn't too excited about catching truants at first,'' said Sgt. J.R. Johnson II., who is not related to Officer J.R. Johnson. ``But it has made a big difference, especially in crime. When we identify the people who are not in school, we are identifying the people who are committing the crimes. There is no question about that.''
Sometimes the trouble is drugs, gangs, guns.
``Usually, truants hang out in groups,'' Hession said. ``That can sometimes lead to problems.''
The unit concentrates on the four public high schools in the Fourth Precinct - Salem, Green Run, Tallwood and Kempsville. But that's not to say all truants are teens. Hession once picked up a class-cutting 9-year-old.
``The kid barely came up to my waist,'' Hession said. ``He had an argument with another student and left the school.''
The Thursday arrest at Salem was at least the ninth gun-related arrest police have made since classes began in September. The Crime Suppression Unit, or CSU, has made nearly all of them. And the unit has confiscated a dozen guns during patrols around the schools since classes started in September.
The most recent gun came from the truck of Shawn Fender, the carpet installer.
``I am for getting guns out of schools,'' Fender said as he was being booked at the Fourth Precinct. Fender is not a Salem student. ``But I didn't even give a second thought to having it in the back seat.''
Fender's felony charge is one of more than 50 the CSU members have logged since September. They also have charged suspects with more than 70 misdemeanors and have interviewed almost 200 people.
Fender said he left the air rifle in his truck after a weekend of target shooting with a friend. Hession believed him. The officer asked a magistrate to release Fender, a Norfolk resident, on a promise to return to court.
Others armed on school property haven't been so fortunate. Usually, juveniles go to the Tidewater Detention Home and adults go to jail, sometimes without bond.
None of the other three city precincts has matched the success of the CSU's eight members.
That's probably because the CSU is the only group of officers whose main purpose is to control truancy and illegal guns aggressively.
The concept for the CSU began forming sometime around 1990. Soon, the unit grew and narrowed its focus. This year, the seven officers and one sergeant have gained notoriety with the highly publicized gun arrests at Salem, Tallwood, Green Run and Bayside high schools.
Since September, they've nabbed almost 100 truants.
``Now there's three more students back in school,'' Hession said Thursday after he and Officer Keith Stewart intercepted a carload of students who said they sneaked out for lunch.
``Who knows what they would have done or where they would have gone? Maybe they would have done a crime, or maybe they would have been the victim of a crime. Either way, they're back in school, and we don't have to worry about them.''
Catching truants isn't high science. The CSU officers just look for school-age people who aren't in school. If they're truant, they get a police escort back to class.
Sometimes the class-cutters are in a passing car, or hanging around a convenience store, or making enough noise at a pal's house to aggravate a neighbor.
CSU officers once nabbed 18 truants at a noisy house. One student was caught hiding in a clothes dryer.
``I think that is the most we've ever gotten at once,'' Hession said. ``They were everywhere in that house.''
Usually, truants are driven back to school. If they're armed, they're arrested.
Lately, more than a few of the truants have been armed. Illegal guns have become a such a common byproduct of the unit's original mission that ferreting out the weapons has become a specialty.
The specialty surfaced early this school year at one of the first football games when CSU officers, dressed in plain clothes, caught four people in a car - which, police said, also carried three loaded handguns - in the Tallwood parking lot. The driver was wearing a ski mask.
Less than a month later, Hession arrested five Chesapeake students in the Salem parking lot. Police said two students had loaded guns, and one had drugs.
But since students aren't the only ones with guns, they're not the only suspects CSU officers collar.
The ``Gun Book'' - a binder that officers fill with pictures of criminals, their guns, and their crimes, fattens weekly in the Fourth Precinct building on Kempsville Road.
The officers also run background checks for all precinct arrests that involve guns. Sometime they discover that a gun-packing suspect is a previous felon, and tack that charge to the original one. It is illegal for felons to have guns.
Hession snapped Fender's mugshot at 4 p.m. Thursday and took a Polaroid photo of the pellet rifle. Both pictures will be added to the precinct's Gun Book.
``He seemed like a nice guy,'' Hession said after he shook hands goodbye with Fender. ``He was certainly polite.''
The carpet installer dialed a pay phone outside the precinct building at sunset, as the rain slowed to a drizzle. This time, the friends were asked to pick him up. ILLUSTRATION: Color photo
JOSEPH JOHN KOTLOWSKI/Staff
A police officer with the Crime Suppression Unit confiscates a Daisy
pellet rifle found in a car at Salem High School on Thursday.
Photo
JOSEPH JOHN KOTLOWSKI/Staff
Sgt. J.R. Johnson II of the Virginia Beach Crime Suppression Unit
talks over the phone to headquarters as Officer Chris Hession fills
out a report on a gun arrest at Salem High School.
KEYWORDS: WEAPONS GUNS SCHOOLS FIREARMS by CNB