Nearly 100,000 New York City public school students pass through metal detectors on a daily basis before entering their school buildings (“A Look at School Safety”). As Max pointed out in his comment to my original piece, the need to prevent violence is very real in certain schools, and the detrimental effects of metal detectors may seem worthwhile if lives are saved as a result of their use. However, there is little evidence to show that metal detectors effectively reduce violence in schools (Hankin). An alternative to employing metal detectors would be to implement new programs and services to help students cope with conflict, emotional distress, and heightened feelings of aggression. The Department of Education can incorporate these topics into health curricula throughout middle and high schools, teaching students about conflict resolution and how to seek help when experiencing emotional turmoil. Additionally, the DOE can increase the number of guidance counselors and psychologists working in schools and better train them to counsel students who struggle with aggression. In this way, instead of viewing school as a source of antagonism where they are criminalized, students will be able to see it a place where they can receive help for their problems. In order to effectively increase trust and reduce the hostility that many students may feel toward their school environment, schools should also slacken their zero-tolerance policies and have administrators and counselors address minor conflicts rather than sending teens and preteens through the criminal justice system. The city’s budget for school safety exceeds $221 million, so reducing metal detector use and police presence in schools would allow the city to allocate some of these funds to implement such programs and hire and train counselors (“A Look at School Safety”).
For years, the Bronx’s court system has been plagued by backlog, a problem that has recently been significantly alleviated by the temporary transfer of judges from other districts into the Bronx. These judges have now left the borough, and the possibility of backlogged cases accumulating once more looms (Rivera). A feasible solution to this problem would be to create a division within the Bronx’s judicial system whose job it would be to preside over cases that are over two years old and expedite their completion. This division would behave much like the transfer judges who recently presided over the borough’s backlogged cases, except that it would be a permanent fixture in the Bronx’s judicial system. As Prof. Binz-Scharf pointed out, the county likely lacks the funds to employ experienced legal personnel in such a division, so it could instead hire law school students or recent graduates who would be willing to work for less in exchange for gaining school credit or work experience.
The NYPD’s distrustful relationship with the city’s civilian population, particularly with African Americans, can be addressed by improving the cultural sensitivity training that police officers receive. In the wake of the Eric Garner case, Police Commissioner Bill Bratton had officers attend a three-day training course, where cultural sensitivity was only one of the topics discussed (Durkin). Ideally, the Police Department should instead incorporate cultural sensitivity training into the Police Academy curriculum and assign it the same importance that it allots to firearms and safety training so that officers can develop the human skills necessary to interact civilly with people of all backgrounds and presentiments about the Department. However, because training all Police Academy graduates may be financially unrealistic, the NYPD could instead offer a small pay raise to officers who volunteer to take select classes at local universities to enhance their people skills, similar to the program that grants NYC public school teachers a $3,000 pay raise for completing 30 credits above their Master’s Degree (“Moving Up the Pay Scale”).
Works Cited:
“A Look At School Safety | New York Civil Liberties Union (NYCLU) – American Civil Liberties Union of New York State.” A Look At School Safety | New York Civil Liberties Union (NYCLU) – American Civil Liberties Union of New York State. N.p., n.d. Web. 16 Feb. 2015. <http://www.nyclu.org/schooltoprison/lookatsafety>.
Durkin, Erin. “Bratton: I Need 1,000 Cops after All.” NY Daily News. N.p., 08 Sept. 2014. Web. 26 Feb. 2015.
Hankin, Abigail, Marci Hertz, and Thomas Simon. “Impacts of Metal Detector Use in Schools: Insights From 15 Years of Research*.” Journal of School Health 81.2 (2011): 100-06. Web.
“Moving up the Pay Scale.” Moving up the Pay Scale. N.p., n.d. Web. 02 Mar. 2015. <http://www.uft.org/new-teachers/moving-pay-scale>.
Rivera, Ray. “Bronx Courts Trim Big Backlog, With Outside Judge at the Helm.” The New York Times. The New York Times, 29 July 2013. Web. 16 Feb. 2015.
