NEW YORK (WCBS 880) – At a time when both public safety and schooling are being reimagined, debate has been reignited over the role of NYPD safety agents in the city's schools
Councilmember Brad Lander, who is also a candidate for comptroller, is leading the call for the city to focus more on counselors than school safety officers.
“We want to move away from having NYPD school safety agents in our schools,” Lander said. “When you over-police a place because of the possibility that there will be an incident, in my experience, you wind up with more problems than you solve.”
Lander said he's not proposing that all the agents be laid off, adding that there would be a transition. But he noted there are "more cops in our schools than guidance counselors and social workers combined."
Parents like activist Mona Davids feel differently. They say school safety agents are mothers, grandmothers and people of color.
“We support you, because you protect our babies,” Davids said at a rally for school safety agents outside City Hall.
Davids said the safety agents aren’t the ones responsible for what activists call the “school-to-prison pipeline.”
“When you have a school system where a supermajority of our children do not read, write or do math at grade level, that is the cause,” Davids said.
Last year, Mayor Bill de Blasio began the process of moving the agents out of NYPD oversight, but his latest budget calls for hiring nearly 500 more officers for schools.