Bratton’s Swan Song on School Safety

By ROBERT TAUB

Outgoing New York City Police Department Commissioner William Bratton held a joint press conference with Schools Chancellor Carmen Farina Thursday to announce that crime in the city schools had plummeted by 35 percent the second quarter of 2016.

Bratton cited data from a police department study that also showed a ten percent decrease in school-related arrests and a 37 percent decrease in summonses issued by the School Safety Division.

“When we talk about the change culture in our schools, we don’t mean that we waved a magic wand,” Farina said. “We mean that we actually invested in professional development for teachers, and commitment time for students in the school day.” Farina dded that it was not all about statistics, but that she and the Department of Education have worked hard to figure out what they need to do differently.

Farina said that some students who were getting in trouble as freshmen and sophomores told her how they had reformed:

“All of them said they never got in trouble again because they learned to use their words more than any other specific part of their body,” she said.

Farina and Bratton also publicized a so-called Team Up! Tuesday Initiation, scheduled for October 25th, and billed as a partnership between their two city agencies that began last year.

“We can actually have us (parents and officers) talking to each other, and understand that we are all here for the same purpose, to make our students better citizens and more productive citizens,” Farina said.

On that day olice officers from more than 70 precincts join students and staff at more than 300 middle schools across every district, to perform joint activities, ranging from visual and performing arts to physical fitness and foreign language lessons.

The interactive event was designed as a “stepping stone” for students and officers jointly to confront such problems as peer pressure, gang recruitment, bullying and drug use.

The State Education Department now designates four New York City public schools as “persistently dangerous”, down from 27 in 2015.

Bratton attributed the improvement partly to the greater number of school safety agents in the schools –4,830 in 1800 city schools.

“That number keeps growing,” he added.

Bratton has played a part in school safety since his time as chief of the Transit Police in 1990, making this appearance somewhat of a valedictory.

“We will continue to work closely with the Department of Education and the Mayor’s Office of Criminal Justice to ensure our School Safety agents have the resources they need to properly support our schools and students,” Bratton said.