Ethan Chu, Class I
On three different days Nov. 15th, Nov. 25th, and Dec. 3rd, Brooklyn Latin discipuli were subjected to scanning from police. Discipuli had to wait outside in the chilly weather as they hurried to put metal items inside their bags for scanning.
Now, you must be thinking, “why do we even have these scannings?” Well in this article, we’ll be answering those questions of yours. We’ll be discussing former Mayor DeBlasio’s justification for these scannings and the many opinions we managed to gather from our community.
Now, why do we even have these increased scannings? According to Mayor Deblasio in a daily briefing, the city is increasing the number of scannings are due to the number of guns found from students over the dates of October 18th-22nd, noting that “there’s been some real issues lately” and that he needs to make sure “there’s never any violence” or harm to students within schools.
Even though it might not apply to our schools, the rationale is that any school in the area can prompt these scannings. In a daily briefing done, NYPD Chief of Department Rodney Harrison uses field intelligence agents to get information about incidents within the city to plan out unannounced scanning for schools near those incidents. So, what this means is that if there is a threat nearby our school, most likely the city will have unannounced scannings for our schools in turn.
Mayor Deblasio thinks that this is a successful way to prevent this issue, noting that he would be doing unannounced scannings at schools “where it would be particularly helpful”; however, our community has conflicting views on the matter.
History Magistra Ms.Vetter notes that metal detectors “are not a valid solution…it makes people feel safe. Makes people think ‘oh hey! We’re doing something.’ when we’re not addressing the big issue.” She adds that she could see the police officers, not affiliated with our school, create more aggression towards the community, “it’s obvious the way that they talk to you all. The way that the police talk to our students when you are in line with metal detectors, yelling at you all about phones, lines, and backpacks, it’s degrading.”
Math Magister Mr Baker notes how the thousands of dollars spent on metal detectors could be used more for educational purposes “there’s a limit to resources here. If we took all that money and used it towards teachers and school resources then it would be more helpful for students and their families.”
Discipula Farrah Agyeman comments how she understands the importance of these metal detectors but believes that it should be handled in a much more efficient way, “they should find a way to make these metal detectors in a way that doesn’t frustrate students and staff…they end up messing up the school schedule if so many people aren’t there for class.”
“I don’t know what will happen. I don’t know if we’ll have more scannings, and I don’t know if this is the right action taken” an anonymous discipuli says “but what I do know is that this is not the issue we should be focusing on, and instead we should focus on more important things that matter to our community.”
Opmerkingen