Extreme Security in NYC Public Schools

New York City classrooms have under gone a massive remodeling as policing and extreme security measures await students daily. The scene in public schools for the past eighteen years has blatantly created an environment of hostility and a place that house criminals. According to Cecilia Reyes of ProPublica, “more than 100,000 middle and high school students [experience airport style security everyday].” School safety agents standby prepared to intervene with hand wands for further inspection if need be.

The process of entering a NYC public school building as a student is one shockingly similar to airport security. Students are required to remove their backpacks and may be required to shed clothes, belts, shoes, and personal belongings if they do not comply with school regulations. If students have belts, accessories, or other items in their pockets while walking through metal detectors, the individual is subject to a wand scanning performed by school safety agents where the spreading and raising of legs are part of the procedure.

Abraham Lincoln High School, located in the Coney Island section of Brooklyn, is one of the many public schools that have rules and regulations enforced by NYPD school safety agents. According to the article "Metal Detectors Remain In Schools Despite Drop in Crime" by Cecilia Reyes and Jenny Ye of ProPublica published in WNYC News, “school principals around the city say, the security measures provide a critical line of defense in schools with particularly volatile mixes of students.” Students and parents, however believe security measures should be implemented to prevent incidents like the Sandy Hook school shooting from happening in New York, but without extreme measures like placing a ban on opened containers of liquid. A student at Abraham Lincoln High School in her junior year of high school describes the tedious protocols she encounters daily as insane, criminalizing, and acts of racial profiling. She said that she finds it “ridiculous that schools that are majority African American and Hispanic are subjected to go through such intense and unnecessary security screening every day.” She continued by saying, “I understand the reasons for safety protocols but at a certain point, consideration has to come into play about how students feel and how security screenings affect attendance.” The daily protocols at Abraham Lincoln High School cause students to miss classes on their schedule and create bad impressions in student-teacher relationships.

According to "Criminalizing the Classroom: The Over-Policing of New York City Schools" by Elora Mukherjee, Marvin M. Karpatkin Fellow, published by the American Civil Liberties Union and the New York Civil Liberties Union, the security protocols since the evolution of school safety in 1998 have gradually advanced in favor of the NYPD. In recent years, the term “school-to-prison pipeline” has gained public recognition. The pipeline is the shortcut that sends students to prison before the age of an average criminal. The early intervention of police in a child’s life has been the successful technique of the school-to-prison pipeline. Since the NYPD is the school's’ form of discipline, when a student is behaving out of line, they are arrested and put into the system, which is the beginning of a criminal record.

Schools with predominately African American and Hispanic students are subject to extreme security measures as they are “Impact Schools.” According to "The Over-Policing of New York City Schools," Impact schools refer to schools with high crime rates which lead to an increased presence of police and more children in the school-to-prison pipeline. Before NYPD involvement in school safety, students were reprimanded by teachers, principals and school officials and—should students’ behaviors get out of hand—parents and guardians. Students and parents prefer the old system which included calls home and in-school reprimanding as it didn’t target their students based on race or religion and there was a genuine love for school by students and interest in work by school officials.

The rise of crime and incidents around the city in the 90s struck the Board of Education by surprise as students were bringing weapons and illicit items to school. The NYPD’s intervention was an action of force when Mayor Rudy Giuliani pressured the Board of Education to transfer complete control to the police department. A common question amongst students is “why?” The students that are victims of extreme security measures taken in their schools question why they are the only percent of the school body that undergoes security. According to "Criminalizing the Classroom: The Over-Policing of New York City Schools" by Elora Mukherjee, Marvin M. Karpatkin Fellow, published by the American Civil Liberties Union and the New York Civil Liberties Union, a student’s account of the security in his school is described a being “treated as though [he] were a criminal. The officers were rude and when [he] asked what the procedure should be [and] interrogated regarding the educational supplies that were in [his] book bag.” Students start to doubt themselves and the learning facility they attend. The practice of over policing of students stands as a strong argument against the perception that students are the only danger to the school environment. Teachers are not subject to being wanded or having their personal belongings searched before entering the school building.

A morning for the average NYC student includes snoozing through multiple alarms, a quick breakfast, a hastened pace through the door and the commute to school. A typical student’s commute to school can range from 10 minutes to 3 hours depending on their distance. Creating a scene of airport security every morning is detrimental to a student’s health and self esteem. The security measures start to make students dread the thought of attending schools with guards and metal detectors.