Nearly 70 candidates for City Council seats across the city are pledging to push for a complete removal of police from city schools, arguing last year’s promise to shift school safety supervision from the NYPD to the Education Department didn’t go far enough.
“In the last budget we got a ‘commitment’ of shifting resources,” said Adolfo Abreu, a City Council candidate in the Bronx’s District 14. “They just did a switcharoo … there wasn’t a real divestment from the school safety division.”
The sign-on pledge, created by the youth advocacy group Urban Youth Collaborative, asks candidates to push to “remove all police personnel from New York City public schools. Do not transfer their supervision to the Department of Education.”
It also asks the would-be officials to advocate to remove metal detectors from schools, and end the practice of involving police officers in responding to student mental health crises.
The fight over the fate of the NYPD’s more than 5,000-strong School Safety division was a centerpiece of last year’s contentious budget negotiations, which took place near the height of the racial justice protests sweeping the city.
Officials touted the move from NYPD to DOE as a major reform, though cautioned the transition would take place over multiple years.
Students who have been organizing for years to reduce the police presence in schools said the momentum is building but there’s still a long way to go.
Jade Entien, a 16-year-old student in the Bronx, said just the visible presence of police in schools casts a pall over the climate in their school building.
“Since they patrol the hallways, it feels kind of stuffy, like trapped-ish,” they said.
Dariel Infante, a 16-year-old Brooklyn student who moved to New York from the Dominican Republic, said he was shocked to see how many police officers staff city public school buildings.
“I wasn’t used to seeing police officers in schools,” he said. “When I came to the U.S., I came to the building and said, ‘am I in school or am I in trouble?’”
The students are instead calling for more than $400 million in funding for school security to go towards additional counselors, mental health supports and alternative disciplinary approaches.
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you get what you vote for nyc now you gotta live in it.
I say, fine. NEXT TIME There’s an incident in the school, cops would normally have to respond to. STAY THE HELL AWAY.. Tell them “Sorry, but cops are not allowed in schools anymore.. DEAL WITH IT your bloody selves!”
No police around and children will be killed in these schools. The “social workers” in the schools will stop the gunmen and the guys with knives, won’t they? After all, the social workers all have sociology and psychology degrees and those degrees will stop the armed criminals, right communist liberals?
EVEN if they did legit have those degrees, i doubt a SINGLE CROOK, will ever be stopped by someone with a flipping diploma.
Dariel Infante, a 16-year-old Brooklyn student who moved to New York from the Dominican Republic, said he was shocked to see how many police officers staff city public school buildings.
‘Moved’ to NY from the Dominican Republic ? You mean an Illegal from DR.
And more to the point, why do they care what a 16-year-old kid thinks ? This is like that 16-year-old Climate Idiot the Libs placed on a pedestal as an ‘expert’ in climate ?
new york public schools turn out a new crop of communist atheists every year. Let’s hope the new crop of school shooters choose to target the teachers and administrators.
99% of the mental health mayhem in public schools is caused by drugs, legal and illegal. So lets hire more drug prescribers in the form of councilors, and take away police, metal detectors, and checkpoints so more drugs can roll into the school. Makes one wonder if the council members are paid stooges for the drug cartels. Try this,,,,take the police out and put God back in. Cheap solution which would cost hardly a thing but maybe a small prayer before class. When I grew up in Dupage County, the most Republican county in America, with Chicago Cook County the most Democrat just to the east, from Kindergarten through Senior in High Scholl I never saw one Cop in the buildings, nor any hard drugs, alcohol, shootings, or deaths. Alpha male WWII experienced teachers who never got sued, ruled the halls, and teachers did not belong to unions.
The children will pay the highest price for this insanity.
SINCE the entire DNC, loves abortions on demand, EVEN AFTER BIRTH, why would they care one rats butt, how many kids suffer?!
Isn’t it interesting, Pelosi will call out her own brown shirts (capitol police) and thousands of National Guards to keep the citizens out of her capitol, but no one seems to be interested in protection our children. They are afraid of the citizens, but it is almost like they want more children to die to promote destruction of the second amendment. What a crazy world we seem to be trapped in.