Opinion

More de Blasio school-safety lies

It looks as if Mayor de Blasio’s effort to put a false happy face on the issue of school safety may be corrupting the NYPD.

As Susan Edelman reported in Sunday’s Post, weapons seizures were up yet again in the city schools last year, for a total rise of 26.7 percent in the de Blasio era. But at the press conference announcing the latest stats, NYPD Assistant Chief Brian Conroy, commander of the school-safety division, painted a different picture — by giving the numbers for “incidents” instead, but without saying so.

The NYPD press office blamed the media, but the video shows Conroy never used the word “incidents” when a reporter asked about “weapon recovery.”

Edelman’s scoop follows a devastating NY1 report on de Blasio’s anti-bullying efforts: Fully 100 percent of city teachers surveyed by the city Department of Education reported bullying among students, and more than 90 percent of city students reported physical fights in schools.

Chancellor Carmen Fariña told NY1 that her agency’s responses are incident-based, not survey results-based. Hmm: Plainly, the de Blasio-Fariña emphasis on counseling, rather than disciplinary consequences, isn’t an effective response.

Last week’s fatal incident at the Urban Assembly School for Wildlife Conservation is only the tip of the iceberg. Indeed, the school’s parents are now sharing a video of a sixth-grader being bullied and pummeled in a bathroom. Why did the school’s leaders ignore the ongoing victimization of students?

And, again, the NYPD’s data (reliant on DOE reporting) fall short of the gold standard that New Yorkers have come to expect of the department. As Greg Floyd, the head of the school-safety-agents union, told The Post, “Because kids are given warning cards, instead of suspensions, their acts aren’t recorded as crimes.”

Fariña claims she has a “zero tolerance” policy. Sadly, that seems to be zero tolerance for actually facing the facts about violence in her schools.