A Look At New York City School Safety
In New York City, the over-policing of public schools only intensifies the School to Prison Pipeline. In order to get to school every day, more than 93,000 New York City school children must pass through a gauntlet of metal detectors, bag searches and pat downs administered by police personnel who are inadequately trained, insufficiently supervised, and often belligerent, aggressive and disrespectful. This burden weighs most heavily on the city’s most vulnerable children, who are disproportionately poor, black and Latino.
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The over-policing of New York City schools, paired with school zero tolerance policies, drives youth directly towards the juvenile and criminal justice systems. While the city over-invests in expensive policing measures for schools that are disproportionately low income, black and Latino, these schools remain under-resourced in fundamental areas that harm student learning. Students in these schools also are more likely to be subjected to zero tolerance policies that involve police personnel in minor, non-criminal incidents and rely too heavily on suspensions.
A look at school safety in New York City 1:
1. At the start of the 2005-2006 school year there were 4,625 school safety agents (SSAs) and at least 200 armed police officers in New York City’s public schools. These numbers would make the NYPD’s School Safety Division the fifth largest police force in the country—larger than the police forces of Washington D.C., Detroit, Boston or Las Vegas.
2. At least 93,411 students attending at least 88 schools must pass through permanent metal detectors to enter their school buildings each day.
3. Since Mayor Bloomberg implemented the “roving” metal detector program in 2006, the city’s budget for school safety equipment more than doubled.
4. New York City has more SSAs per student than other cities have police officers per citizen. For example, New York City has twice as many SSAs per student than San Antonio has police officers per citizen.
5. During the 2004-2005 school year, 82 percent of children attending high schools with permanent metal detectors were black or Latino, compared to the 71 percent average citywide.
6. The city spent an average of $9,602 on each student at a school with permanent metal detectors, compared to the citywide average of $11,282 per student. At schools with metal detectors and more than 3,000 students, the city spent only $8,066 per student.
7. Police and SSAs get involved in twice as many non-criminal incidents in schools with permanent metal detectors than in schools without them.
8. High schools with permanent metal detectors issued 48 percent more suspensions than schools without metal detectors.
Click here to download graph of Number of Police Officers in Major Cities vs. SSAs in NYC Schools (PDF).
Click here to download graph of Police Involvement in NYC Metal Detector Schools by Type of Incident (PDF).
Click here to download graph of NYC Superintendent Suspensions by Year (PDF).
Click here to download graph of Enrollment of Black and Latino Students by Type of School (PDF).
Click here to download graph of Overcrowding in NYC Schools by Type of School (PDF).
Click here to download graph of Yearly Spent Per NYC Student by Type of School (PDF).
Please click on the following links for more information:
- School to Prison Pipeline Fact Sheet
- A Look at NYC School Safety
- Student Safety Act Coalition
- The Student Safety Act
- NYCLU Youth Camera Action Project
- NYCLU Report: Criminalizing the Classroom: The Over-Policing of New York City Schools
- Palm Card: Know Your Rights with Police in Schools
- Take Action
- Links and Resources
Footnote
1 New York Civil Liberties Union and American Civil Liberties Union (2007). Criminalizing the Classroom: The Over-Policing of New York City Schools.
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