Readin’, ’ritin’ & rampage
Teen shootings vex NYPD
The NYPD implemented a plan at the start of the year to try to stem the Big Apple’s soaring number of teen shootings, but nearly three months later, the bloodshed continues — including near city schools.
Just weeks ago, two teenage boys were separately shot and wounded blocks from their high schools in upper Manhattan — areas the NYPD previously said would be flooded with cops in its effort to stop the violence.
Experts and advocates say more needs to be done, including increasing the number of school safety officers and resurrecting the more aggressive plainclothes anti-crime units that sought to get guns off the streets.
In January, after a spate of teen shootings, the NYPD launched a new safety initiative that included stationing cops in areas frequented by youths, including near and around schools.
“We put more cops in and around the schools, the corridors, the transit hubs, the Chipotles, the McDonald’s of the world,” NYPD Chief of Patrol John Chell told The Post last month. “So we’ve kind of made a ring around schools and are just basically trying to give them safe passage.”
The department also tried to establish connections with school officials and closely track youth events with a history of trouble.
Still, in the first two months of 2023, 21 juveniles were shot, according to NYPD data obtained by The Post. That compares with 17 shot during the first two months of 2022, and just 10 during the same period in 2021.
‘Trying’ times
Those numbers track with annual trends showing city kids are increasingly at risk of getting shot: 149 kids were wounded by gunfire in 2022, compared with 138 in 2021 and 125 in 2020.
On March 14, two students, 16 and 17, were shot outside schools in separate incidents on the Upper West Side and in East Harlem in what cops think were tied to one gang-related dispute.
The NYPD did not respond to a request for information about what, if anything, the department will change in the wake of all the gun violence.
But cops have said in the past that they’re trying.
The NYPD has sent police to target some city schools, including four Youth Coordination Officers per precinct who are tasked with focusing on students. That equals to about 300 additional cops citywide. The NYPD concentrates its resources on about 75 to 80 schools with the highest rates of violence, according to police data.
Chell also said precinct commanders have weekly video calls with principals to make sure cops know sooner about school beefs that could turn into shootings later. An unspecified number of intel officers work in the schools to gain kids’ trust, which Chell said helps spot potential problems more quickly.
Mona Davids, a parent advocate and head of the NYC School Safety Coalition, said the teen violence won’t stop until the city dedicates more cops to the schools and the state changes its lax bail-reform laws.
“That’s why these kids are wilding out, because there are no consequences,” she said, referencing the 2017 Raise the Age law that requires 16- and 17year-olds charged with nonviolent felonies to be tried as juveniles.