The number of weapons seized in city schools has risen nearly 50 percent so far this year, the NYPD said Tuesday.
Between July 1 and Oct. 1, police seized 328 weapons, a 48 percent increase compared with the same period last year when 222 weapons were confiscated, Assistant Chief Brian Conroy said at a news conference.
“This is something that we’ve said has been a trend over the last few years, and it’s something we’re working hard to try to turn back around,” Conroy said.
Just a week ago, 18-year-old Abel Cedeno brought a switchblade to his Bronx high school and stabbed two of his classmates, one fatally. It was the first homicide in a public school since 1993, officials said.
Cedeno’s school, the Urban Assembly School for Wildlife Conservation, does not have metal detectors.
“Metal detectors are an important part of finding weapons, but they’re only in 6 percent of our school buildings, so we do rely on the cooperative effort between school safety agents, teachers, the principals and the students to identify those other weapons,” Conroy said.
Last year, 57 percent of the weapons recovered were at schools without metal detectors, Conroy said. Of the 1,800 public schools in the city, 88 buildings have metal detectors, the Department of Education said.
It’s difficult to tell whether the increase in seizures means more students are bringing weapons to school or whether the department has gotten better at finding them, Deputy Commissioner Dermot Shea said. But crime among school-aged children has dropped, he added.
“We see robberies of school-aged children down,” he said. “When you examine the homicides and the shootings . . . those age groups are dramatically down.”
Overall crime in the city fell at a record-breaking rate in September, according to the NYPD.
