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In the first eight months after the city began carting portable metal detectors to middle and high schools for unannounced visits, the initiative had netted over 150 box cutters and knives and 12,689 cell phones. The 1-year-old program, which employs officers of the School Safety Division of the New York City Police Department, averages two school visits a week. The Bloomberg Administration has said the program increases safety in schools. Critics say it breeds animosity in students and undercuts longer-lasting solutions to school violence. Metal detectors showed up in city schools in 1988 as a result of safety concerns. By April 2006, the city reported that 82 middle and high schools had permanent metal detectors installed, but the New York Civil Liberties Union stated that at least 88 schools have permanent detectors, in a report it released in March with the American Civil Liberties Union. Last year, the city expanded the metal detector program to send teams to randomly selected schools for one- or two-day visits. Administrators are given a few days notice to prepare for the search, according to Dina Paul Parks, a Department of Education spokeswoman. The program, though, isn’t always random. If a particular school has had a recent fight, for example, the Department of Education cooperates with the School Safety Division to organize an unannounced visit. Either organization can suggest that a scan be conducted. “We play a very central role,” said Parks. When the teams visit a school, they arrive early and scan students for the day. “The program has been very successful,” said Parks, who said it has reduced the number of weapons brought to all city schools. The Department of Education keeps records of the schools visited but refused to release them. The NYPD did not return several phone calls. At the beginning of the 2005 school year, New York City employed 4,625 School Safety Agents and assigned more than 200 armed police officers to schools, according to the report released by the ACLU and NYCLU. The NYPD would not release the number of safety agents who are now involved in the program. Students and parents have complained about the conduct of safety agents involved in the program. In March, as the officers at the Community School for Social Justice ordered Butler through the detector and patted him down, the 15-year-old fearfully complied. But by the next day, anger had supplanted fear at this South Bronx school. “I don’t want to get scanned, sir,” Butler told the security guard. Officers surrounded him, and Butler eventually backed down. Other students, less pliant, were taken to private rooms where police allegedly threatened suspension, arrest and calls to parents. Student organizations such as the Urban Youth Collaborative, which Butler is a member of, have spoken out against the random searches, arguing that they create an environment that impedes education. Besides taking weapons and phones, police have confiscated art supplies and lunches, according to a staff member of the Urban Youth Collaborative who did not want to be named because the organization’s policy is to keep focus on its members. “We’re students, not criminals,” said Edwin Rodriguez, 16, at a rally of several youth organizations fighting for student rights in March. Kristie Martinez, who refused to give up her cell phone at the Community School for Social Justice, said she was put into a room for about five hours with officers who threatened her with school suspension and arrest. Schools Chancellor Joel Klein’s rules require that students who refuse to go through metal detectors or be searched must be placed in a separate room. Their parents are called to resolve the situation, which is what happened in Martinez’s case. She missed school that day. The searches create an adversarial relationship between the students and police, said Christopher Tan of Advocates for Children of New York, a nonprofit organization that works to end discrimination in schools. Tan previously worked for the ACLU in Los Angeles and saw the effects of metal detectors on education there. The end result of the searches in Los Angeles was not “to keep guns off campuses.” Rather, the searches created “an atmosphere of anxiety and distrust,” said Tan. “There are more helpful ways for resolving conflicts.” Conflict resolution classes, peer mediation and encouraging parents to work with administrators would work better to improve safety, said Tan. Restoring administrators’ authority over school discipline would empower educators rather than undermine them in front of students, the ACLU and NYCLU state in their report. Since 1998, when the NYPD took charge of school safety, education administrators have not had direct authority over the officers who provide security and operate the permanent metal detectors. “We don’t need metal detectors for a good education,” said Donna Lieberman, executive director of the NYCLU.
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