Hey Michelle Darko
English Comp II
March 3,2019
Benefits of Metal Detectors
In an interview In 2016 held by Metrofocus, Greg Floyd the president of teamsters local 237 ( Which represents the city school safety officers) he states that “ Metal detectors are In airports, city halls, and government agencies. So why can’t they be placed in schools? Metal detectors are placed for safety, and that’s just the society that we live in”.Floyd claims that metal detectors are a way of life and are there to protect civilians because we never know what someone is capable of doing.The use of Metal detectors in schools began in 1992 after a shooting at Thomas Jefferson High School In Brooklyn that lead to the death of two students. Ever since then metal detectors have been a popular thing in schools. Almost about 91,114 High school students go through metal detectors every morning in New york City as a daily routine, although this might seem like a load sum of students it can also be a load sum students so are going to be safe. Metal detectors should be placed in schools to prevent any violent activity happening in the schools and ensure safety for not only the students but the parents who trust the school to keep their children protected.
If Metal detectors should be placed in schools then they should be placed not just in a couple of school but in all kinds of schools. If all airports have metal detectors like Floyd mentioned earlier then that same rule should be applied in schools. Metal detectors are usually placed in low-income schools which are mostly dominated by the African-American race. In a new analysis made my the federal data it show that “ Almost all major American cities, most African American and hispanic students attend public schools where a majority of their classmates qualify as poor or low-income”. An individual’s action is unpredictable whether it is in a high-income neighborhood or low-income. The problem here is not that metal detectors make students feel like criminals but the fact that they are mostly placed in African-American schools indicating that only people of that race are capable of having weapons or any type of endangerment, and in matters that is not the case. So placing metal detectors in all schools would give an equal judgement on everyone not just low-income students.
Although metal detectors can not solve everything it will help prevent students from bringing weapons to school. If students see that their schools have metal detectors they wouldn’t be tempted to bring them. “ The mere presence of the machines may be enough to prevent violence if the attacker thinks they are likely to get caught as they enter the building” says Joe Vazquez, the director of security sales for Garrett Metal detectors. Someone who has at least some hesitancy with what they’re doing will probably reconsider if they see a checkpoint with a metal detector . This will probably spare someone’s life or stop someone from being harmed. According to the New york post 55% of box cutter and knives are confisticated from students almost every three months. Now that’s a large amount of knives and box cutters, now what about the knife that weren’t able to be confisticated. In 2017 a young boy stabbed a student while they were in school “Abel Cedeno, an 18-year-old sophomore who had been bullied for his sexuality, snapped. Cedeno says he was being mocked by two boys; he pulled a black switchblade out of his backpack and stabbed them, killing Matthew McCree, 15. The student unfortunately died, and although the student was wrong for bullying the student he did not deserve to die. If that school had a metal detector the young man’s life would have probably been spared. There are perhaps many more stories of a student being bullied in school that haven’t received attention like this one. But we need to make sure that all students are protected at all times, and we can’t control everything that goes on in schools but what we can do is try to prevent them. And the first step would be to place metal detectors in schools, it better safe than sorry.
