New York Gets Tough on Truancy : Prevention: City police round up students playing hooky and cart them back to school. In 1994-95, 40,000 have been picked up, 488 weapons seized.

Lt. Helen Rossi adjusts her blond hair and her blue cap, checks her red lipstick in the rear-view mirror and jumps out of the police van marked “Truancy Patrol,” ready for a day nabbing students drawn to the glitter of Times Square.

Rossi, a 23-year veteran of the New York Police Department, is a tough-talking hooky cop who can spot a truant in a minute. She quickly spots two boys strolling down 34th Street.

“Excuse me, boys, aren’t you supposed to be in school?” Rossi asked, giving a sly smile. She checks their school-issued laminated identification cards and sighs.

“OK, boys, get in the van. You’re going back to school,” she said. She feels their backpacks for weapons and pats them down.

The truancy patrol is part of New York Mayor Rudolph Giuliani’s effort to clear the streets of youngsters skipping school. The Truancy Intervention and Turnaround Program began citywide in 1993, and costs about $300,000 each year.

Beginning in October, Los Angeles police will begin a far milder truancy program, issuing tickets to youngsters who are supposed to be in class.

In New York, police pick up stray youths, load them into blue-and-white police vans and take them to one of seven truancy centers around the city. The centers, located mostly at schools, are staffed by attendance teachers--and security guards--who interview the students.

If the truants are 12 or older, they are sent back to school with a transportation pass. If they are younger, they are picked up by parents, guardians or school officials. Police follow up with letters to parents.

About 150,000 students are absent on a typical day at New York City public schools, the largest system in the country with more than 1 million pupils. School officials do not know how many of them are absent without a legitimate excuse.

Giuliani blames truants for contributing to the city’s escalating daytime crime rate.

“Our problem was a major one so we needed to do something pretty decisive,” Giuliani said in an interview. “This, we believe, is helpful in reducing crime but also in protecting kids. The fact is you can’t ignore the problem.”

So far, police have picked up about 40,000 students and recovered 488 weapons, including 88 guns, since the beginning of the school year.

School attendance has been improving each month since the truancy sweeps started, district officials said.

“This is New York City,” said Margaret Williams, a school truancy supervisor. “We get children from all over--even across the country. . . . They can go have an exciting day of truancy--they can go to Central Park or to the best, cheapest video store in Manhattan.”

Over the course of two hours, truant officer Rossi stopped more than a dozen kids.

Two elementary school girls walking down 34th Street were carrying knives and a fake gun. Two teen-age boys wearing baseball caps had ditched to get haircuts. Two junior high school girls skipped school to go shopping.

By day’s end, Rossi and her partner had scooped up 15 truants and stopped many more students. Among those released: two girls on vacation from their home in Chicago and two children with their parents.

“Everybody’s worth an ask,” she said. “If we stop 10,000 kids, we could probably pick up 8,000 truants.”

Times Square draws so many students that police set up a truancy office inside the subway station at 42nd Street and 8th Avenue. There, in a dingy office that shakes when a subway rumbles through the station, officers and an attendance teacher stop students before they even get to the streets.

On a recent day, Officer Luis Velez brought four boys to the Times Square truancy office and scanned them for weapons using a hand-held metal detector. Sharp-edged box cutters, he said, are the weapons of choice these days among New York City students.

Velez said earlier this year he seized two handguns, several vials of crack cocaine and $500 cash from a 15-year-old. “The parent told me he needed the guns for his protection,” Velez said.

On this day, the four boys were sent back to the subway--this time headed for school.

Said one: “I ain’t never coming to Times Square again.”