The city’s top cop urged President Trump to put a silencer on his call to arm America’s educators as a deterrent to the U.S. epidemic of deadly school shootings.
“Let teachers teach,” declared NYPD Commissioner James O’Neill after delivering the Friday keynote address at a New York Law School breakfast.
“As far as arming every teacher, it’s not a good idea. We’re in law enforcement. We’re here to protect people and keep people safe.”
O’Neill said the duties of already heavily burdened educators should not expand to include firearms and firefights with heavily-armed intruders.
“Having a gun is a big responsibility,” he said. “You have issues of safeguarding the weapon, you have issues of training. This is what law enforcement does, and you should leave it to law enforcement to protect the children of the city.”
Since last week’s Parkland, Fla., attack that killed 17 people in a local high school, Trump has parroted a National Rifle Association plan to “harden” schools and give weapons to teachers.
He repeated the proposal during several Friday appearances, at one point asserting schools need some type of “offensive” capability.
Under the Trump suggestion, between 10% and 40% of all educators would receive firearms training in return for a small raise in pay.
O’Neill fired back that the NYPD already boasts a “great program on how to keep the children in the 1,400 schools in New York City safe.”
“We have school safety officers — and there are 5,300 of them — and we have a uniformed task force,” said O’Neill. “Not only that, every precinct has Neighborhood Coordination Officers that work with the students and teachers in every school.”
New York schoolkids are planning on adding their voice to the debate with a walkout on March 14th, the one month anniversary of the Florida shooting.
Mayor de Blasio, in his weekly Friday radio appearance, said the city will offer lesson plans in its schools for high school students planning the walkout in support of gun control.
“We are going to make sure that there’s a real educational impact,” he said. “We are going to make sure that whatever happens is done in a safe and orderly fashion.”
The mayor, who had ripped the Trump plan to bring guns into classrooms a day earlier, said he had no intention of indoctrinating city students into sharing his support for new laws.
“I certainly wouldn’t want any individuals’ viewpoint leading the discussion, my own included,” said de Blasio. “But I think it is an important moment for young people to debate and to reflect and to think about the world that they want to create.”
The walkout is supposed to last 17 minutes — or 60 seconds apiece for the 14 students and three educators killed in the Valentine’s Day mass shooting.
The mayor said city educators were working on a plan that would allow middle schoolers and elementary school students to participate in some way.
“You know, to gather in the building for the memorial to the … 17 people lost,” he said. “And again that may be silent, that may be with young people speaking, that’s all being worked through.”
A day earlier, de Blasio joined the American Federation of Teachers in blasting the Trump proposal.
“I suspect the President doesn’t know anything about public schools,” said de Blasio. “There’s nothing more terrifying than the notion of putting more guns in our children’s schools.”
Following the Parkland shooting, De Blasio and the city Education Department instituted a new security plan intended to halt a mass shooter before the trigger is pulled.
The plan includes more drills and random weapon scans at all city schools, a proposal that the commissioner said could only help in an active shooter situation.
“We do drills, and it’s important to do drills,” said O’Neill. “It is important people know that, if something does happen, the actions they need to take.
“I know it’s a little frightening. We have to pay attention about what’s going on everywhere, in the city, in the country and around the world. We need to keep people safe. This is what we have to do.”
With Thomas Tracy
