Mayor de Blasio is playing with the safety of New York school children.
That’s the view of a growing number of teachers, parents, and elected leaders after Hizzoner announced a plan last week to expel New York police from their role of supervising school security officers and turning that responsibility over to the Department. of Education of the city.
Those who remember when schools were plagued by gangs and illegality, before the police stepped in and overhauled the system in 1998, fear a return to the problems of the past.
Under the old Board of Education, some school safety officers were criminals. One was a proud member of the Latin Kings who invited students to join the violent street gang.
Some see the impending change as a prelude to disaster.
“It’s something the DOE doesn’t do well: security,” said Gregory Floyd, president of Teamsters Local 237, which represents the 5,035 school security officers.
“They weren’t ready for that 22 years ago. They weren’t ready for that now.”
“The DOE can barely educate our children, let alone keep them safe,” said Mona Davids, president of the New York Parents’ Union and mother of a son in high school.
Davids said the DOE has a poor record of examining workers, such as school bus drivers, and keeps hundreds disciplined for dangerous behavior, from taking photos of a child’s skirt to drinking alcohol behind the wheel, at work, The Post found.
“Do we want the DOE to handle security? Hell no, ”Davids said.
The planned transfer, announced Wednesday as protests against police brutality and racial injustice at City Hall comes amid an alarming increase in the number of weapons confiscated from schools. They peaked at five years in 2018-19 with 1,699 knife seizures, according to the latest New York Police data.
Security officers have seized loaded revolvers, 9mm pistols, meat knives, and daggers from children in schools, The Post reported.
In 2017, the Bronx teenager Abel Cedeno, 18, stabbed two classmates, killing one, at the now-closed Urban Assembly School for Wildlife Preservation. Despite his claim that he was bullied for his sexuality, Cedeno was convicted of involuntary manslaughter.
That year, the New York Police Division of School Safety also counted 143 sex crimes, including eight rapes and 751 assaults, including 122 serious crimes.
But the suspensions were decreased under a DOE program designed to facilitate disciplinary action. Instead of summons, security officers distribute “warning cards” to students for marijuana possession and disorderly conduct.
In 1997, a year before the board voted 7-0 to turn school security over to the New York police, crime and violence were out of control.
Among the incidents: three Manhattan teens forced a classmate to practice oral sex in the high school bathroom as part of a gang initiation; and a 15-year-old student was cut on the head and neck while in a classroom, requiring 12 stitches.
Some perpetrators worked as security officers.
They included Harry Roman, who dressed in the yellow and black colors of the Latin king to show his loyalty and showed the gang’s hand signal.
Roman, a member of the Latin Kings for 27 years, carried a gravitational knife, a street weapon in which the blade is opened, and invited the students to join the gang.
He wrote a love letter to a high school student, admitting that he said, “Be my wife, be my girlfriend.”
Roman was not the only bad apple.
In 1995, a security officer was arrested for bringing a loaded semi-automatic and sharp knife to a Manhattan elementary school. A Brooklyn officer was charged with first-degree rape of a 15-year-old high school student who brought him to his apartment.
After New York Police took over school security, a power transfer long sought by Mayor Rudy Giuliani over then-Chancellor Rudy Crew’s fierce objections, the department began hiring, training, and supervising officers, which later added 3,200.
The city turned the “school security officer” into a civil service job that required a test, a complete background check and 17 weeks of training. Physical agility was required for emergency response and rescues.
Officers are unarmed, but they can make arrests, issue subpoenas, search and seize, and apply handcuffs, powers opposed by youth advocacy groups that claim to disproportionately impact black and Hispanic children.
Security officers will continue to be NYPD employees this school year, DOE spokesman Nathanial Styer said. “The complete transition will take two years.”
By then de Blasio will step down.
But Council spokeswoman Jennifer Fermino called the timeline “unacceptable,” saying members will push for change to begin in November.
Proponents of the movement feel cheated.
“It is not a systemic change. It is a bait and a change,” said Jasmine Gripper, executive director of the Alliance for Educational Quality, a group that demands “police-free schools.”
Youth advocacy groups say the DOE should hire more guidance counselors, social workers, and mental health specialists to address the roots of student misconduct.
School Chancellor Richard Carranza said he will establish a task force to study the transition and begin training school security officials in “de-escalation, implicit bias and restorative justice.”
DOE officials were unable to say where the additional funds for such training will come amid severe budget cuts, a hiring freeze, and more resources needed to reopen schools.
A Manhattan teacher who was also a boy in public schools called the plan “smoke and mirrors.”
“I had an extremely violent class. The idea of restorative justice does not work. That, combined with the total relaxation of the zero-tolerance discipline code to tolerate everything, will simply contribute to the deterioration of New York public schools.
“As a father, I fear for the safety of my son.”
Councilman Robert Holden, D-Queens, voted against the budget plan.
“The last organization I want in charge of school safety is the DOE,” he said. “They will falsify crime numbers, as well as graduation rates and grades.”
Jerry Cammarata, a Staten Island educator who was on the Ed Board in 1998, also criticized the move.
“It is a mistake on the mayor’s part to return security to the DOE,” Cammarata said. “The mayor acts instinctively and puts the city in deeper danger.”
She is a freelance blogger, writer, and speaker, and writes for various entertainment magazines.