Council fight over school-safety cops

The City Council held a heated hearing on Thursday over the future of school-safety agents, with one Queens member calling the proposed removal of the NYPD employees “absurd.”

Councilman Daneek Miller — who represents southeast Queens and is a father of five city publicschool graduates — defended the safety agents’ role.

“To think that we’re going to remove these folks from the building is just absurd,” the Democrat said. “Whatever sense of safety and security these young folks have often comes by virtue of these women from their community.”

School-safety agents are 90 percent black and Hispanic, 70 percent female and mostly native New Yorkers. They are unarmed and currently operate as part of the NYPD’s School Safety Division.

Mayor de Blasio had announced last June that budgetary control over school security would shift from the NYPD to the city Department of Education by next year.

Although the division’s connection to the NYPD has been criticized, Miller said his own children and constituents do not view the current agents as hostile figures.

“When you talk to the children in my district, in my household, and in the community, and you talk about school-safety agents, at the mention of that, there is a glow,” he said.

Miller said the agents’ association with the NYPD often dissolves in the minds of city students.

“When we walk into a building, we don’t necessarily see that blue uniform, an extension of the Police Department, but see an extension of our community,” he said, “and oftentimes, the only extension of that community that you’re going to see.”

Others on the council painted a darker portrait of the agents’ role.

Councilwoman Helen Rosenthal (D-Upper West Side) asserted that the agents are, by definition, extensions of the NYPD, a body she called a “paramilitary” organization.

While she praised individual agents, Rosenthal argued that they didn’t belong in schools in their current form.

“Why would we want anyone who is part of a paramilitary organization to be in our schools?” she said.

Others said the agents create a hostile and criminalized atmosphere in city schools that are 70 percent African American and Hispanic.

Several students testified on Thursday that the agents — along with metal detectors — contribute to a negative environment for kids.

Council Education Committee Chairman Mark Treyger backed the transfer of school security to the DOE and said more resources should be dedicated to social workers and guidance counselors.

“A 7-year-old having a bad day should not be an NYPD issue,” the Brooklyn Democrat said.

To think that we’re going to remove these folks from the building is just absurd.

— Councilman Daneek Miller (left) on the push to get the NYPD out of schools