Tensions simmer over school in Federal Hill: Incidents put residents, Digital Harbor students at odds, dredging up suspicions of disrespect, racism.

Byline: Sara Neufeld and Brent Jones

Feb. 19--When Baltimore's troubled Southern High School was reborn five years ago with a $42 million makeover as Digital Harbor High, the school committed to fill 20 percent of its freshman classes with neighborhood children. For the past two years, however, the showcase citywide technology magnet school in Federal Hill hasn't received enough applications from nearby residents to fulfill that commitment. That lack of interest is emblematic of the gulf between Digital Harbor's mostly black and mostly poor student body and the predominantly white and affluent neighborhood where the students go to school. It is a gulf that manifests itself in the fears and wariness on the part of some merchants and residents on the one hand and suspicions of racism on the part of some students on the other. And it is a gulf that, to some, has elevated a string of relatively minor criminal acts -- a smashed car windshield, a purse-snatching -- into a mini-crisis.

In October, a fight between two girls in the heart of Federal Hill's business district attracted about 100 unruly Digital Harbor students, one of whom smashed a car windshield. Then last month, unnamed Digital Harbor students were accused -- perhaps erroneously -- of stealing a woman's purse and throwing it into the Inner Harbor, causing her to fall in. No arrests have been made. Dennis Trencher, 60, who lives near the school, says most students behave as they walk…