Blades seized in New York City public schools has rocketed up 7% this year — as the number of weapons-detecting scanners and school safety agents plummets.
The troubling data comes the same week as three student stabbings inside schools.
This school year, through Dec. 6, cops and safety agents have recovered 1,088 knives and 260 boxcutters, surpassing the 1,256 (1,004 knives & 252 boxcutters) seized during the same period last year, according to NYPD School Safety Division data.
Yet only about 79 of 1,500 school buildings have permanent metal detectors, along with seven roving detectors on wheels, according to the latest known tally by the school safety officers union. In 2018, there were 93 school scanners.
Scanners are highly effective, responsible for finding 56% of weapons smuggled into schools this year.
The NYPD refuses to discuss the number of scanners. But Gregory Floyd, president of Teamsters Local 237, said the number has stagnated.
At the same time the roster of school safety agents has plummeted from a high of 5,200 in 2020 to about 3,700 now.
“They don’t do enough to stop these things before they happen … I would agree with more frequent random scanning,” said one frightened senior at Edward R. Murrow High School in Brooklyn, three days after cops said a 15-year-old boy was stabbed there after a fight with another teen.
“For a lot of us, it’s scary that this happened inside the school,” added a classmate.
A day after the bloodshed at Murrow, a 12-year-old girl was sliced in the leg by a fellow student at JHS 123 James M. Kieran School in Soundview, the Bronx.
The suspect in that attack, a 14-year-old eighth-grade classmate, and the victim got into a scuffle inside a classroom, possibly related to a social media spat, according to sources.
And on Thursday, a 15-year-old boy was slashed in the face, possibly with a boxcutter, inside the AECI Charter School in Melrose, also in the Bronx, cops said.
Knife play has been on the rise for several years, according to NYPD data. During the 2021-22 school year, 3,291 blades (2,600 knives, 691 boxcutters) were recovered, and that number increased 9% during the 2022-23 school year, when 3,588 blades (2,865 knives, 723 box cutters) were seized, according to the department stats.
“There’s kids out here being robbed so they’re carrying weapons to protect themselves,” said a Manhattan police officer with more than two decades on the job. “If you stab another kid nothing’s coming from it anyway. When you have no consequences or repercussions all you have is chaos.”
Parent advocate Mona Davids agreed fear has played a role in the weapons surge.
“Kids are bringing in more knives because they are afraid in school,” she said. “It’s easier to have a knife than a gun.”
Students said nothing can stop someone determined to bring a blade into school.
“Kids have already found a way to bypass that. If they want to they will,” a Murrow senior said.
Every school should be “evaluated” for the scanners or there “will be fatalities,” Floyd warned, pointing to rising gang violence.
But lefty Big Apple pols, led by former Mayor Bill de Blasio and the City Council, began pushing for the removal of weapons scanners in 2015, arguing that their presence was tantamount to “criminalizing” school kids.
“Because some students see metal detectors at schools as intrusive and denigrating, schools should ensure the scanning process is as minimally intrusive as possible,” according to a report that year by a panel convened by de Blasio to push the DOE and NYPD for their removal.
The debate took a turn in Sept. 2017, when Bronx student Abel Cedeno, 18, stabbed Matthew McCree, 15, to death with a switchblade inside the now-shuttered Urban Assembly School for Wildlife Conservation — the city’s first classroom slaying in 25 years.
De Blasio pledged to tighten security at the school, which did not have scanners, and brought in detectors the next day. McCree’s family sued the city.
The case is still pending in Bronx Supreme Court.
“It’s telling that they [the city] are not giving us numbers” regarding the metal detectors, said attorney Sanford Rubenstein, who is representing the McCree family in the civil action.
Undaunted by the rising violence, Public Advocate Jumaane Williams released a 2021 report — “On Reimagining School Safety” – that argued the city must work towards the goal of removing police infrastructure from its schools.
Floyd rejects those arguments. “Forget about all these other outside groups that don’t have children in the New York City school system saying you’re criminalizing the kids [by having scanners],” he said. “Some of these kids are criminals and you’re trying to protect the good ones from them.”
Schools with scanners “are chosen based on a data analysis of recovered weapons, crimes, and overall violence,” the NYPD said. “The scanning locations are continually assessed by NYPD School Safety Division and NYC Public Schools to determine where the efforts are most effective.
Department of Education spokesperson Jenna Lyle said: “Weapons and dangerous items have absolutely no place in our schools, and our staff works every day with the NYPD to keep weapons out of schools … Every NYC public school has, at a minimum, access to a full-time social worker, guidance counselor, or a school-based mental health clinic, and additional supports are being made to any student who needs it.”
The overall number of all weapons confiscated in schools dropped 7% so far this this year (2,356 from 2,544), NYPD data show. Firearms recovered remained the same at seven.
Other contraband was down, including Taser stun guns, down 52% (92 from 144); BB guns, 1% (10 from 11), and “other weapons” 20% (899 from 1,126), the stats show.
Additional reporting by Susan Edelman and Matthew Sedacca
