$28-Million Disarmament Plan Launched for N.Y. High Schools
Mayor David N. Dinkins on Monday enacted a $28-million plan to protect high school students from rampant violence.
Dinkins had more police stationed in school corridors and metal detectors installed at the doors less than a week after a 15-year-old brought a stolen, .38-caliber handgun to school and killed two other teen-agers in a hallway that was teeming with police because the mayor was coming to the school to make a speech.
The killings at Thomas Jefferson High School, in the East New York slum district of Brooklyn, were the second and third in five months. In the past five years, 50 students from the school have been killed, mostly in the surrounding streets, where discarded crack cocaine vials crunch underfoot and gangs fight for territory.
About 2,000 students, teachers and ministers marched Monday from the school to these neighborhood sites, and marked each with a wreath and a spray-painted sign “LLH,” which the Rev. Leonard Hatter said stood for Love, Life and Hope.
Television comic Bill Cosby joined Dinkins in a visit to the school. Both called for an end to the violence they say has destroyed too many young lives.
The New York mayor’s disarmament plan involves X-ray machines, key-cards for students and metallic door locks. It establishes daily metal detector use and police patrols at five high schools in Brooklyn and the Bronx that have high rates of violence and weapons seizures.
Security at Jefferson and 35 other of the system’s 120 high schools was to be upgraded after a Police Department audit is completed.
Start your day right
Sign up for Essential California for news, features and recommendations from the L.A. Times and beyond in your inbox six days a week.
You may occasionally receive promotional content from the Los Angeles Times.
