Go figure: A Manhattan high-school student and her principal physically assault two school-security officers – and now they’re the victims, at least according to the “civil liberties” zanies.
The Department of Education and the NYPD rightly beg to differ.
Officials from both departments stood up for the city’s nearly 5,000 school-safety agents last Wednesday at a City Council hearing that was primed to recycle the usual complaints – namely, that the officers, who were brought under NYPD control in 1998, are “overbearing,” and that their presence makes students “feel like prisoners.”
The convenient backdrop for the hearing was the previous day’s arrest of 17-year-old Isamar Gonzales and Principal Mark Federman.
According to police, Federman had provoked a physical altercation with agents as he tried to prevent them from leading Gonzales out the school’s front door in handcuffs.
She had been arrested after punching one of the agents in the face when they stopped her from entering the building before it opened.
City Councilman Peter Vallone Jr., who chaired the hearings, says the incident shows the need for clearer protocols for interactions between administrators and safety officers in dealing with crime on school grounds.
That’s fine by us – as long as those protocols make absolutely clear who has authority in criminal situations: the cops.
Assistant Police Chief James Secreto said as much at the hearings: “With fights between kids and no injuries, the principal can make that call. Once you have an injury, you have a crime, and that is when we are going to make that call.”
If Principal Federman never got that memo, someone should send him another copy.
The fact is that police authority has been a vital part of the progress that education officials are starting to make against the violence that plagues city schools.
Yes, most discipline should be left in the hands of school officials – but quickly removing the worst offenders allows the students who actually want to learn to do so in relative peace.
Nor should New Yorkers worry too much that the presence of security officers somehow offends students’ dignity.
Part of a good education, after all, is learning that actions have consequences.