Shooting at Brooklyn charter school comes amid spike in violence, weapons at NYC schools

The shooting at Williamsburg Charter High School that wounded two students and an adult Wednesday follows a series of violent incidents just outside city campuses and an increase in the number of weapons found in schools.

So far this school year, there have been 2,984 weapons found at city schools, according to the NYPD, including eight guns, 168 Tasers or stun guns and 1,192 knives. For the entire previous school year there were 2,554 weapons found, including 12 guns and 1,104 knives.

According to the preliminary Mayor’s Management Report, there were 346 major felonies in the 2021-22 academic year, compared to 288 in the 2019-20 academic year, which was disrupted by the COVID-19 lockdown in March of that year.

An education department spokesman argued on Twitter that the department had made progress fighting crime at schools when comparing statistics from the last full pre-pandemic school year. The NYPD defines major felonies as murder, rape, robbery, felony assault, burglary, grand larceny and grand larceny of a motor vehicle.

“It’s just heart-wrenching what is happening. And we're working really hard to try to get in front of this and figure Schools Chancellor David Banks has said, adding that it’s “the issue that keeps me up at night.”

Students say they are more fearful of their safety on the way to and from school than they are within school walls, according to Banks.

Recent violence nearby schools include a 13-year-old boy charged with shooting and wounding two other teens near Campus Magnet High School in Queens last month, as well as a 17-year-old boy chased and stabbed to death after leaving Liberation High School in Coney Island.

Last year, a shooting in the South Bronx killed a 16-year-old girl, Angellyh Yambo, and wounded two others. The victims were walking home from their high school.

The shooting at Williamsburg Charter High was the second near the school in just three months. In December, a 15-year-old boy allegedly shot a teen girl in the leg outside the school, sending students running for cover – though the principal claimed in a letter to parents the bang was caused by a car, according to the Daily News.