Spike in school weapons busts

School weapons arrests have skyrocketed a startling 35 percent so far this year, according to data released by the NYPD Tuesday.

“We have seen an increase,” NYPD Assistant Chief Brian Conroy testified at a City Council hearing Tuesday. “We certainly acknowledge that and we take that very seriously.”

A total of 746 weapons have been seized this school year since September compared to 552 over the same stretch last year, Conroy said.

While the NYPD didn’t specify the weapons recovered, Conroy said the spike has been propelled by knives and boxcutters.

But despite a multiyear increase in seizures under Mayor de Blasio, Conroy said metal detectors were placed in just three additional schools this year for a total of 91.

Overall, 6 percent of city school buildings have scanners, he testified.

A total of 1,673 weapons were seized in schools in 2015, 2,053 in 2016 and 2,120 last year.

Conroy’s testimony came nearly two months after the city’s first school murder in 25 years. On Sept. 27, Abel Cedeno allegedly fatally stabbed Matthew McCree at the Urban Assembly School for Wildlife Conservation, a nonscanning school.

Conroy attributed some of the increase in weapon seizures to improved detection methods.

“Overall, we think we’re doing a better job,” he said. “As I men- tioned, we don’t always get them from just scanning schools. We’re getting weapons from nonscanning schools.”

Conroy also noted that kids caught with knives that aren’t considered illegal weapons — like a standard kitchen blade — aren’t normally arrested or issued summonses.

Those cases, Conroy said, are handed over to school administrators who address them at their discretion.

Conroy also said a student caught with a boxcutter in a school building would “not necessarily” be subject to arrest or summons.

School-safety-agent union chief Greg Floyd has repeatedly accused school brass of suppressing weapons incidents due to pressure from the de Blasio administration to polish statistics.

The Department of Education has denied that accusation.

Conroy also suggested that some city school kids carry otherwisemenacing items for benign reasons.

“Sometimes a student may have something that they carry based on something that they are using at their job,” he said.

Despite the weapons increase, Conroy stressed that most other major indicators of school crime have been consistently shrinking under de Blasio.

Serious crimes, arrests and summonses have all dropped dramatically, Conroy said, adding that major offenses are down by 2 percent so far this year compared to last.