Thousands of “dangerous instruments” were confiscated in New York City public schools last year — including close to 300 weapons, The Post has learned.
School safety agents and cops seized 278 weapons during the 2023-24 school year, including guns, brass, knuckles and knives, law-enforcement sources said.
A total 3,695 dangerous instruments, such as pepper spray and box cutters, were rounded up during that same time period, according to the sources.
The eye-popping numbers came as students are set to return to class Thursday for the first day of the new semester.
While shocking, the data marked a dip from the 2022-23 school year, when 4,471 dangerous instruments and 476 weapons were seized, according to the sources.
Police officers pointed to gangs as a major cause of school violence.
“Schools can be a powder keg for crime,” one Manhattan cop said. “You have gangs recruiting students to join their crew. Teens are afraid not to join.”
A Brooklyn cop agreed: “You also have students crossing paths with students from all the neighborhoods or gangs and that can lead to problems.”
In one violent incident from last school year, a 16-year-old boy was attacked near a school in Staten Island by a group of unknown boys believed to be members of the “400 Gang,” according to sources.
The alleged gang members hit the boy in the back of the head knocking him to the ground and then kicked and pummeled him. The attackers also threatened the teen by holding out box cutters, the sources said.
Other school violence stems from out-of-control relationship drama, sources said.
In one incident from last year, a 16-year-old girl in Rockaway was punched in the face by another girl after refusing to talk to the attacker’s boyfriend, sources said.
“There are always problems over girlfriends and ex-girlfriend’s, which lead to fights,” one Queens cop said.
The drop in weapons filtering through classrooms and hallways last year was accompanied by a decline in incidents reported to police in and around public schools.
The 2023-24 school year saw 7,692 incidents, a 13% decrease from the 8,864 reported during the previous school year, according to the sources.
“There are two ways to increase safety: more scanning and more school safety agents,” said Hank Sheinkopf, the spokesman for the Local 237 Teamsters, the union representing school safety agents.
An NYPD spokesperson said school safety agents have enhanced security ahead of the upcoming semester.
Public schools will start out the year with 3,663 school safety agents, an increase of about 120 from this time last year, the rep said.
But some school safety agents said they fear they are still understaffed to take on the new year’s challenges.
“We don’t have enough guards to do the proper job,” one said.
Another agent said the city doesn’t have enough agents to keep kids safe on their walks to and from school.
“We used to have agents outside the schools to provide a safe corridor for students walking home or to public transportation. We don’t have enough people to do that anymore, and neither do the police,” the source said.
Some sources noted there have previously been cases of school administrators not properly reporting weapons seizures, thus skewing the numbers downward.
In 2022, staffers at a Queens junior high school were stunned to find a deadly stash of weapons locked inside a safe in the principal’s office, rather than vouchered and turned over to the NYPD to be tallied, according to sources.
Sources said JHS 125 administrators — including new principal Michael Borelli — opened up the locked box to find more than a dozen blades of all kinds, and what appeared to be a gun.
The new principal immediately told school safety agents who vouchered the items and alerted their central command.
At the time school safety agent Greg Floyd said the find suggested that prior administrators had failed to properly report the weapons, thus skewing city statistics.
“I’ve been saying they’ve been hiding these things for years,” Floyd said. “Now you have proof. How many schools have safes just like this one where they put these weapons instead of reporting them?”
The Department of Education and City Hall did not return requests for comment Wednesday.
