Three years into a four-year pilot program giving the New York Police Department control of safety in the public schools, sexual assaults have increased so dramatically that the City Council is now arguing for the addition of 200 more cops plus surveillance cameras in stairwells. [...] Board of Education member Irving Hamer now regrets his role in the decision, which in the last two years has led to the citywide doubling of court summonses for kids 16 and up, all while sexual assault has grown—by nearly 13 percent this year—and slashings and robberies continue. "I just hate that I was even in on it," says Hamer, who joined the unanimous vote but now believes the arrangement has "criminalized school buildings." [...] In white suburban America, where the most brutal acts of student violence have taken place, parents and community leaders resist metal detectors and police, arguing that criminalizing schools is too high a price. But in New York City, where 85 percent of the students are kids of color, these procedures have silently become daily routine. As of June 2000, there were 191 baggage X-ray machines and 305 walk-through metal detectors in use in 72 schools, with more to come. [...] These kids go to schools with metal grates on the windows, steel doors, and surveillance cameras. When suspected of breaking a rule, they're held by officers, detained, and interrogated in rooms the students call "the cells." For all this, the schools don't feel much safer. In November, the Joint Committee on School Safety, staffed equally by representatives from the mayor's and the chancellor's offices, produced the first official report since the takeover. The committee wrote that 67 percent of all principals polled said "there has been no change in their school's climate of safety" since the transfer.
Copyright © 2001, Iain Jackson, after-words.org
[Archives: 2001 and after]
Archives before February 5, 2001
Search entries:
12/19/2001: vive la france
12/19/2001: princess, redux
12/19/2001: yemen and rumsfeld
12/18/2001: you're NOT in the army now
12/18/2001: interesting donation
12/18/2001: shame on winn dixie, indeed
12/18/2001: saudi princess
12/17/2001: new resolve
12/17/2001: a victim of the attack ... yeah, right
12/17/2001: polluters ho!