The morning that District Attorney Stephen Zappala helped to kick off a crime-reporting campaign in the Penn Hills School District, his office arrested 16 individuals on charges of selling drugs to students in the community.

He used the arrests as an example of how the Stand Together! Act Responsibly! program can help to prevent crimes by creating an atmosphere in which students and residents collaborate to report criminal activity.

"These were people that were hurting kids in these schools," Mr. Zappala said, "so my promise to the administrators and the teachers of this school district is I'm going to do what I can to keep people from hurting children outside of the school.

"In the school, this is wonderful because we're reaching kids at a much younger age and we're telling them, 'This is your home, this is your school. If somebody conducts themselves in an unacceptable way, you tell them you'll get them out of your school.'?"

Mr. Zappala said his office began its focus on crime in schools with the Woodland Hills district two years ago. But Penn Hills is the first community in the country to take on a joint initiative among schools, residents and the district attorney's office regarding crime reporting.

Washington Elementary School launched the initiative on Friday, but it will spread to the rest of the district's elementary schools before the end of the school year.

Starting in kindergarten, students are taught to recognize and report potentially dangerous situations at school, and to apply the same standard in their homes and neighborhoods. The initiative will receive community support through promotion in local businesses, forums with parents, a community tip-line for anonymous crime reporting, and a resolution from council declaring Penn Hills a S.T.A.R. community.

Police Chief Howard Burton said molding the attitudes of young children can help counter negative attitudes about reporting crime that exist in the community.

"It's one of the main reasons kids this age are very important," he said. "We really have a good group of kids at this school that do what's right, so we want to build their confidence while they're young that this process does work."

Superintendent Joseph Carroll said he would like to implement the program at a middle school level, but said a different approach will have to be taken to engage older students.

Safety Kids Inc. founder Diane Brown, who helped Mr. Zappala create the S.T.A.R. program, said using the program in middle schools might be more a matter of changing minds than shaping them.

"In general, kids are pretty set in their ways by middle school," she said. "We would need to present [the initiative] appropriately and effectively so they grasp the idea."

But Mr. Zappala made it clear that the program's main objective is to fight crime, and said students who don't grasp that idea will face the consequences of their actions regardless of their age.

"With younger kids, we're trying to help them make good decisions at an earlier age," he said. "But with the older kids that have made decisions, especially if you want to sell drugs, the ramifications are like today. We arrest you, and whatever the courts decide to do with you, your future changes today."

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