NYPD Finds 328 Weapons In City Schools In Past 3 Months

NEW YORK CITY — Cops found 328 weapons in New York City schools in just the last three months, the NYPD said. That's 48 percent more than the 222 found in the same period last year, Assistant Chief Brian Conroy of the NYPD's School Safety unit said Tuesday.

Among the weapons brought into classrooms this year was a three-inch switchblade knife that police said 18-year-old Abel Cedeno used to stab two classmates in their Bronx high school last Wednesday. Police had recovered 119 knives from schools as of Sept. 24, according to NYPD data.

Weapon recoveries in schools have been on an upward trend in recent years, Conroy said. A total of 2,120 weapons — including guns, tasers, BB guns, knives and razors — were found in the 2016-17 school year, up from 2,053 in 2015-16, NYPD data shows.

"It's difficult to say — are we better at catching the weapons, or are they bringing more in?" Chief Dermot Shea, the NYPD's head of crime control strategies, said Tuesday at an unrelated news conference.

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The police department has been randomly screening students with metal detectors since last Thursday at the Urban Assembly School for Wildlife Conservation in the West Farms section of the Bronx, where Cedeno is accused of killing one student and leaving another in critical condition on Sept. 27. A metal detector would have picked up the knife used in the crime, officials said last week.

Those metal detectors will be in the school "for the foreseeable future," Mayor Bill de Blasio said. Any school that wants the machines permanently installed has to request them from the NYPD, he said.

Metal detectors, which screen students daily at about 6 percent of city schools, are just one tool cops use to root out weapons. Some 57 percent of weapons recovered from schools last year were not found using the detectors, he said.

"We do rely on the cooperative effort between our School Safety agents, teachers, principals and the students to identify those other weapons," Conroy said.

Metal detectors aren't always the answer, de Blasio said, as the practice of daily security screenings "comes with real problems" for students.

In addition to the random screenings, the Urban Assembly high school got more School Safety officers and counseling support for teachers and students in the wake of the stabbing. The Department of Education will also train teachers on defusing conflicts and reporting bullying in the coming weeks, city schools Chancellor Carmen Fariña said Monday.

"Nothing is more important than the safety of students and staff and we work in close partnership with the NYPD to ensure the safety of all school buildings," Toya Holness, a DOE spokeswoman, told Patch in a statement.

(Lead image via Pixabay)