Kids are sneaking fewer guns and knives into city schools, but the NYPD and city Department of Education are loath to cut back on their airport-style metal detectors, The Post has learned.
The incidents of students caught with weapons or dangerous items such as blades and box cutters –found by scanners and other means — dropped to 1,162 last school year from 1,259 in 2009-10 and 1,352 in 2008-09, the NYPD said. Firearms seized plunged from 22 four years ago to 11.
But scanning conducted at 88 Department of Education buildings, housing more than 150 schools, often stays put — even if a school’s safety has vastly improved.
“They’re hard to get rid of,” said Lisa Gioe, principal of Millennium Brooklyn HS, a selective new academy in the old John Jay HS building in Park Slope.
Long-troubled John Jay closed in 2004, but students in four new small schools must still go through the magnetometers.
Gioe, who called the building “incident free,” said the negative perception stings.
A neighborhood dad recently stopped to ask about the schools, but after seeing the detectors, told her: “Forget it. I’m not sending my kids here.”
One principal in the building backed off a joint bid to remove the scanners after NYPD and DOE officials warned, “If anything happens, it’s on your head,” said City Councilman Brad Lander.
At the Martin Luther King Jr. complex near Lincoln Center — where two teens were shot in 2002 in the since-shuttered high school — kids in six new schools still wait on 20-minute lines, remove belts and jewelry, and have cellphones and open drink containers confiscated by the school.
In contrast, students right next door at Fiorello H. La Guardia HS of Music & Art and Performing Art — the elite “Fame” school — sail through with a swipe of their ID cards. While forbidden by the DOE, everyone brings cellphones and iPods — but keeps them hidden, kids say.
“It’s not right — we’re treated like ‘the bad kids,’ ” said Cheyenne Bristol, a student at the HS for Law, Advocacy and Community Justice at MLK.
Some students say they feel safer; others liken it to “a jail.’’
NYPD Deputy Chief Vincent Coogan said, “It’s there for their safety.”
Last week, a 16-year-old boy was jumped by four teens and stabbed inside Long Island City HS, a school without scanning.
Shortly before the NYPD took over school safety in 1998, new schools in the Julia Richmond HS complex on the Upper West Side and in Eastern District HS in Williamsburg succeeded in a broad-based push to get rid of the metal detectors– and their stigma.
“We greet students at the door with respect,” said William Jusino, principal of Progress HS for Professional Careers, one of three schools that moved into the closed Eastern District –once gang-plagued and violent. The new schools offer conflict-resolution to tackle tensions, lots of activities to keep kids busy, and the staff is extra vigilant, Jusino said.
The NYCLU contends that scanners tend to “criminalize” kids in schools mainly populated by minorities. “Metal detectors should be used as a last resort, and for a limited time,” said advocacy director Udi Ofer.