Going After School Agents

A bill introduced last week in the City Council seeking stricter oversight of School Safety Agents has the support of 24 of the 51 Council Members. With luck, that number won't grow.

The bill's sponsor, Robert Jackson, argued that all the measure would provide is "transparency and accountability" by requiring quarterly reports on disciplinary actions taken in the schools while simplifying the process for reporting alleged misconduct by School Safety Agents.

Teamsters Local 237 President Greg Floyd, who represents the agents, views it as an "unfair and unwarranted attack" on his members, particularly objecting to a provision of the bill that would place them under Civilian Complaint Review Board scrutiny. He also questioned the timing, arguing that statistics just-released showing a double-digit drop in school crime over the past year should entitle them to congratulations, not a bill that suggests they are misbehaving on a regular basis.

Have there been occasional incidents where School Safety Agents went too far in dealing with unruly students? Yes. But on the whole, they perform well the difficult job of keeping teenagers, who can be volatile emotionally — and particularly so in troubled schools — under control.

One young activist from a Brooklyn school objected to the way that students are subjected to metal detectors, contending that they "are not criminals."

But the detectors should carry no greater stigma for high school students than for those who must go through them when they enter City Hall.

Until evidence emerges that overreactions by School Safety Agents are more than an isolated phenomenon, it makes no sense to place them under greater scrutiny.