LOWER EAST SIDE — The number of weapons seized in city schools has spiked nearly 50 percent this year — an increase the mayor said speaks to better enforcement.
From July 1 to Oct. 1, police seized 328 weapons from students, compared to 222 over that stretch last year, NYPD officials said.
“We’re working hard to try to turn that around,” NYPD Assistant Chief Brian Conroy, commanding officer of the department's school safety division, said a press conference Tuesday.
The startling statistic was revealed just a week after Matthew McCree, 15, was fatally stabbed and his 16-year-old friend wounded by knife-wielding classmate Abel Cedeno, 18, inside Urban Assembly School for Wildlife Conservation, police and prosecutors said.
It was the first time in nearly 25 years a student was killed inside a city school, officials said.
A second knife was discovered in the same classroom a day later by crime scene cleaners, though police said the weapon was unrelated to the fatal stabbing.
“We spoke to the person who had the knife,” NYPD Chief of Detectives Robert Boyce said, adding that the teen had the knife in his backpack at the time of the attack. “The kid had nothing to do with the stabbing at all. Neither did the knife.”
Mayor Bill de Blasio called it “a tragic truth” that kids have been bringing weapons to the classroom for years.
“What I appreciate about this report is that we’re getting more and more of them,” he said.
