Guns found on NYC school students prompt call for action

ByEyewitness News WABC logo

Friday, October 22, 2021

Guns found on NYC school students prompt call for action

The event took place outside Adlai Stevenson High School in the Soundview section of the Bronx.

SOUNDVIEW, Bronx (WABC) -- The NYC School Safety Coalition held a news conference Friday following yet another day of gun violence near a public school.

The event took place outside Adlai Stevenson High School in the Soundview section of the Bronx.

The group said the City's schools are facing a shortage of over 1,000 school security agents right now.

Five times in the past two days students in the nation's largest public school system have been caught with guns, some of them loaded.

"And if they were not there this week, who would have found those guns? Not a guidance counselor, not a social worker, not a teacher," NYC School Safety Coalition's Mona Davids said.

The group criticized Mayor Bill de Blasio claiming he has been slowly advocating for less NYPD control and more control from the Department of Education.

On Wednesday school safety officers recovered three guns from students at three schools in the Bronx and Brooklyn, and then on Thursday morning more guns at schools in the Bronx and Queens.

At I.S. 98 in the Bronx, a 14-year-old student showed off a pink 9 mm handgun to another student in the school.

That student told his mother last night, who called the school. School safety agents searched the student and found the loaded firearm inside his book bag.

At I.S. 98 Bay Academy in Brooklyn, a 14-year-old student showed off a pink .9mm handgun to another student in the school.

At Martin Van Buren High School in Queens, a 17-year-old boy showed another student a gun.

School safety agents heard about it, searched the school, and found the gun in his backpack. Charges against him are pending.

And in Thursday's incident, gunfire broke out just a few steps from the P.S. 65 Mother Hale Academy in the South Bronx.

Police quickly took someone into custody. The victim is expected to survive.

In a statement, a DOE spokesman said "every day, we work with the NYPD to provide additional school security agents and police coverage and institute random scanning, where necessary."

The NYC School Safety Coalition is calling for more metal detectors in schools and for a meeting with the city's likely next mayor, democratic candidate Eric Adams.

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