Shooting Near Queens School Spurs Call For Gun Violence Crackdown

BAYSIDE, QUEENS — After a Bayside teenager was shot on his walk home from school Friday, neighbors and local politicians gathered Monday to call for gun violence prevention measures.

The teenager, who leaders identified Monday as a Cardozo High School student, was shot in the arm several blocks from the high school, police said. The incident reportedly prompted the school to go into a brief lockdown March 25.

School representatives and local politicians gathered Monday near Springfield Boulevard and Horace Harding Expressway — where the shooting happened — to demand a multi-level response to neighborhood violence, including increased law enforcement in the community and school itself.

"We’re here today to call for a coordinated response between parents, teachers, community leaders, and school, police, and elected officials to get guns off the street, keep kids in school and out of trouble, and invest in their futures so they know there’s alternatives to violence out there," said Council Member Linda Lee, whose district encompasses swaths of northeast Queens.

Lee, echoing the sentiments of her colleagues — including Bayside Council Member Vickie Paladino and U.S. Rep. Grace Meng, who were both in attendance Monday — said that this kind of neighborhood-wide response would include an increase in the number of officers in the local precinct, as well as more school safety agents and social workers at Cardozo High School.

The call for more school safety agents at Cardozo began last year, when videos of fights at the school surfaced online, prompting safety concerns.

School officials reportedly said at the time that the building had enough safety agents, but a spokesperson for Local 237, which represent the agents, said that school security was slashed from about a dozen agents to four — a point that Lee reiterated Monday, noting that the building, which has more than of 3,400 students, is down to three or four safety agents according to its principal.

Lee, herself a social worker, also noted the importance of investing in social-emotional programs and professionals at Cardozo, which she aims to do as the chair of the Council's committee on mental health (which Paladino also sits on).

"I've been talking to schools across the district and one of the things they've been mentioning is they've noticed a very, very visible change in a lot of these students' emotional wellbeing," she said. "If any student thinks it’s necessary to use a gun on someone else, we’ve failed them as a City."

Citywide discussions on fighting gun violence amid an uptick in crime became more personal in Bayside this month after the suburban-like enclave of Queens saw its first shooting incidents of the year.

On March 19, gunfire erupted near 208th Street, hurting one teenager, in a shootout that neighbors and politicians have blamed on a group of so-called squatters living nearby.

State Senator John Liu, who has been among those leading the push to vacate the Bayside house after the shooting, also spoke out against the Cardozo shooting.

"This is the second shooting in less than a week here in Bayside, and we are here to send a strong message that these despicable acts have no place in our community," he said.

"Bayside is not the Wild West! We must get these guns off the streets and out of the hands of our youth."

Related Coverage

• Teen Shot Near Bayside's Cardozo High, Police Say
• Teacher Accused Of Attacking Bayside Student: NYPD
• Videos Of Fights At Bayside's Cardozo High Raise Safety Concerns