NYPD Badge (Michael Dorgan, Queens Post)
Feb. 1, 2021 By Michael Dorgan
Dozens of candidates running for city council have pledged to remove the NYPD from public schools.
Approximately 70 candidates, including 22 from Queens, have signed on to a pledge where they would call for the NYPD to be barred from schools if elected. Furthermore, they would also seek to remove metal detectors from school buildings and have outside groups help students will mental health issues.
The pledge was created by Urban Youth Collaborative, a student-led youth advocacy group that calls for education reform in New York City public schools.
“The presence of police, surveillance, and invasive security measures pushes our most vulnerable students further to the margins,” the pledge reads. The group notes that black and Latinx students have suffered the most under the current system.
“After decades of criminalizing and policing young people in every space we occupy, we are demanding police free schools now and forever,” the pledge reads.
At present, there are more than 5,000 NYPD safety agents performing security duties at public schools and last year – at the height of racial justice protests – the mayor gave assurances that school security would be transferred over time from the NYPD to the Dept. of Education.
However, signatories say the mayor’s assurances don’t go far enough. They are demanding that the NYPD be removed from schools as soon as possible.
Instead, they want school safety to be placed in the hands of guidance counselors, nurses, social workers, restorative justice coordinators as well as academic and social support staff.
The signatories are also calling for an end to all zero-tolerance disciplinary policies at schools which often lead to students being suspended or expelled for minor disciplinary offenses.
In its place, “restorative practices” would be implemented at all schools by 2022. The practice often involves the victim and the offender meeting and reconciling with one another.
The signatories also want more funding for mental health support at schools.
The candidates who signed the pledge are listed on page 3
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21 Comments
School Safety Officers, not Police Officers, are only in NYC schools because of decades of failure, violence, weapons, and unsafe environments for students looking to excel and teachers trying to provide education to hardworking students. Hashtag politics, anything to get elected. None of them can reference an incident in an NYC school for a reason to “ban” them, but it’s trendy to despise the NYPD so they all voted for it. If they only knew how many weapons were seized every single day, and how that environment can affect learning. Unsafe schools are horrible for the economy, property values, taxes, and a city’s and neighborhoods reputation. Politicians send kids to private so the voters are left with the results. It’s all very sad.
Big, big mistake to remove the school police, I would think you need more with the increase of Gangs in throughout the city. Council members are no te truly representing us rhere world is upside down, the ones that do have kids, married, family oriented which are few, don’t send their kids to NYC public schools and when they do like DiBlasio rhey go to specialized High Schools like DiBlasiio son who went to Brooklyn Tech and attends Yale University and DiBlasio and Carranza want abolish and lower the standards on all the Specialized and G&T programs to fit the demographics, so if your Black, Hispanic/Larino, White, Asian or South Asian you work hard at your studies, test well, to get into a good school, sorry you’ll end up with the thugs, getting picked on.
Trump’s Capitol rioters were attacking police, but we need them to keep our children safe.
The more liberal we’re getting the further from reality we are.
Dave – Conservatives are known for putting police in schools? I don’t remember seeing police in schools during the Eisenhower, Nixon or Reagan administrations.
And if THEIR KIDS ARE ASSAULTED in the schools, I guess they will send in the social workers. Shame on them!
This is absolute insanity. Their tune will change once the next murder in a school occurs.
William- There are over 1 million students in the NYC public school system. How many murders a year are there? The next murder? Is the murder rate in NYC schools greater than the murder rates in the work place or other school systems? Please provide some details or statistical data to support your baseless assertion alluding to disproportionate amount of murders in the NYC schools.
Hey, there’s been a murder every 15 years! This is a huge problem! ?
What a shock
They love criminals
Cults love the word they.
Sounds to me more like a union thing, watch and see in 3 years they will bring in some union worker as school security in plain clothes who is under no regulation and cannot be fired. Do these candidates actually get more votes by saying they will remove school security?
Guest – I don’t know where you get your information, news flash, Union workers can be fired I know I have fired dozens of people in unions over my twenty years in management. Do you know NYC Police officers are unionized?
i’ll get get some popcorn for the show. this should be good. what could go wrong? lol
Call me old fashioned, but did anyone ask the parents of public school children that they think? Or does that matter at all?
Sickening. These people are living in a fantasy. The schools will quickly return to the mayhem of the 80s, when they were infamous for crime and negligence. These polices make it nearly impossible for the good students to thrive.
Arthur- I attended WC Bryant in the 80’s and it was nothing like the exaggeration you’re spewing.,Nothing!
Expect gang activity and murders inside schools to happen if the get rid of the NYPD and metal detectors.
Apparently pandering to the criminals is business as usual for these fools who probably don’t even have kids in school
Hashtagger- You’ve been pandering to a treasonous career criminal for the past four years.
This is so stupid.