The school year started off with panic in Brooklyn — after a 15-year-old student tried to slip a loaded gun past the front doors on the first day of classes.
The metal detector went off at the Brooklyn School for Career Development in Clinton Hill about 9:45 a.m. after the boy placed his book bag on the scanner, officials said.
He was quickly surrounded by school safety agents who discovered a loaded .22-caliber pistol pressed into the bag. Parents and students who had just streamed into the school were quickly hustled out.
The boy was taken to the 88th Precinct stationhouse for questioning, cops said, and charges against him were pending.
The incident marred the first day of classes for 1.1 million city school kids and happened just a few miles away from Intermediate School 392 in Brownsville, where Mayor de Blasio and schools Chancellor Carmen Fariña welcomed kids to the opening of school.
It also came with the de Blasio administration overhauling its school discipline code and weighing whether to remove metal detectors from some city schools.
The School for Career Development caters to students with learning disabilities and behavior issues.
Claudine Jones, 31, said she was standing in line to get into the school with her 15-year-old daughter when she heard the metal detectors beeping.
“I didn’t think nothing of it. I thought it was something else. They just told us you gotta be out. He has a gun. You gotta leave,” Jones said.
Jones said police soon arrived and put the teen on the ground before placing him in handcuffs.
“It was scary,” Jones said. “I don’t know why he would bring a gun to school knowing they have metal detectors.”
Career Development student Fatima Ray, 16, said the gun-toting teen was her boyfriend.
“I’m leaving. I’m not going back to school today. It’s not safe because of the gun,” she said.
“He’s my boyfriend,” she said. “He’s a popular kid. This morning was basically a normal morning. I spoke to him on the phone. I didn’t know that he had a gun or if he had problems at school.”
Local 237 President Gregory Floyd, whose union represents the school safety agents, said the incident proves the mayor needs to increase safety in the public schools.
“First day, first gun,” Floyd said. “Why would de Blasio want to remove scanners from schools? It’s crazy.”
Less than an hour after the Clinton Hill episode, a scanner at Lincoln High School in Coney Island detected a knife on a student. School safety officers confiscated the knife, but did not arrest the teen.
De Blasio, who spoke to reporters at an unrelated school visit in Staten Island, said the city is reviewing the use of metal detectors in public schools.
“There is a plan to evaluate in schools where the school community itself thinks that either scanners should be subtracted or added or changed,” de Blasio said.
“I’m very unhappy that that young person did that today and he will certainly suffer the consequences,” he added.
City education officials said all students and staffers at the school where the gun was found were safe. Fariña said the city would investigate the incident.
“We take this matter very seriously and we’re investigating it,” she said.
The city operates fixed scanning stations at 88 school buildings containing nearly 400 city schools.
Education department officials regularly deploy mobile a metal detectors — operated by NYPD school safety agents — to randomly selected public schools.
Meanwhile, education department officials said EMS responded to a report that students were under the influence of a substance at Grand Street Campus High School in Brooklyn. Officials said the NYPD confiscated the substance.
Department officials said there was a 29% decline in all crime in New York public schools between the 2011-12 and 2014-15 school years.
Yet weapons seizures in city schools were up by roughly 25% in the 2015-16 academic year compared to the previous academic year, sparking worry among parents and educators.
With Thomas Tracy, Molly Crane-Newman, Erin Durkin
