School Crime Decline Recorded
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New York City public schools experienced a drop in major felony and violent crime in the last school year, according to the city’s mayor, police commissioner, and schools chancellor.
There was an 11% decrease in major felony crimes citywide and a 10% decrease in violent incidents last year, Mayor Bloomberg announced yesterday at a press conference in Manhattan. The number of major felonies dropped to 1,042 in the last school year from 1,166 incidents in the 2006-07 school year, according to the mayor’s office.
“The safer and more orderly a school is,” Mr. Bloomberg said, “the more students learn.” He called the decline in crime “staggering.”
The biggest drops were in crimes involving violent assaults, Commissioner Raymond Kelly said, noting that there were no incidents of rape in city schools in the last year. He said larceny, including thefts of laptops, cell phones, and iPods, is currently the most frequent type of crime in schools.
Major felony crime fell 34% and violent incidents fell 31% since the 2000-01 school year, the mayor’s office announced.
“Our schools are becoming increasingly safe and as a result more and more learning is taking place,” Chancellor Joel Klein said.
Reporting of violent acts in schools has come under scrutiny in the past. An audit by Comptroller William Thompson Jr. of the Department of Education’s reporting of violent, disruptive, and other incidents at city public high schools released in September found that incidents were underreported in 10 sampled schools, and there was a wide variation between schools in how they reported such incidents. It used information that was gathered in the 2004-05 school year.
Yesterday’s figures were different because they were found using citywide data and involved crimes reported by police rather than just school incidents, according to a school official.
An advocacy director for the New York Civil Liberties Union, Udi Ofer, said he agrees with the mayor that school safety should be a priority, but said he is concerned about minor disciplinary problems being treated like criminal activity.
“In certain schools students are treated like potential criminals from the moment they walk through the schoolhouse door,” he said.
The NYCLU is now asking City Council to pass a bill that would require the NYPD to report to the council raw data on incidents in schools, Mr. Ofer said.
