4 THE QUEENS COURIER • MAY 24, 2018 FOR BREAKING NEWS VISIT WWW.QNS.COM
Queens pol’s
bill to limit
hazing passes
BY SUZANNE MONTEVERDI
smonteverdi@qns.com / @smont76
Prompted by the death of a 19-yearold
Flushing resident in 2013, an eastern
Queens lawmaker is moving to rein in
hazing incidents in the state.
Proposed by Assemblyman David
Weprin, the bill seeks to prohibit physical
contact or activity in any organization’s
initiating ceremony. It passed
the Assembly and was delivered to the
Senate on May 16.
Th e advocacy group Stop Hazing
defi nes hazing as “any activity expected
of someone joining or participating
in a group that humiliates, degrades,
abuses, or endangers them regardless
of a person’s willingness to participate.”
Th e organization estimates that more
than half of college students involved in
clubs, teams and organizations experience
hazing.
Th e legislation was prompted by the
death of Michael Deng, a Baruch College
student who was pledging to Pi Delta Psi
when he died during a December 2013
fraternity retreat in Pennsylvania.
Th e student was subjected to a hazing
ritual known as the “glass ceiling,”
where he was blindfolded and forced to
carry a backpack fi lled with 20 pounds
of sand while being knocked down by
fraternity members. Deng, who was
from Flushing, sustained a traumatic
brain injury during the incident.
Four individuals involved in the incident
were sentenced on Jan. 8 aft er they
pleaded guilty in November to felony
charges of voluntary manslaughter and
hindering apprehension. Th e national
fraternity was banned from operating
in the state of Pennsylvania for 10 years
and ordered to pay a $112,500 fi ne.
“Th e best way for us to prevent hazing
is to ensure that no student is ever
put in a situation where their safety is
in jeopardy,” Weprin said. “By prohibiting
reckless physical conduct and physical
activities during initiation ceremonies,
we can protect students and other
individuals from the substantial risks
caused by hazing. Th ere is no better way
to honor the death of Michael Deng,
one of my constituents, by ensuring that
this will never happen to another student
again.”
Queens schools eye security
boosts following school shootings
BY JENNA BAGCAL
jbagcal@qns.com/@jenna_bagcal
In the wake of the tragic school shootings
in Parkland, Florida, and Santa
Fe, Texas, over the span of less than
two months, the co-president of the
Community Education Council for
District 24 in Queens said that parents
in the district have requested that the
Department of Education allowed locked
doors in their schools to increase safety.
Dmytro Fedkowskyj said that the
schools in his community had committed
the months of March and April to discussing
school safety within the district.
Th e main things that parents requested
were locked doors, increased camera
surveillance and a front door buzzer system,
but Fedkowskyj said that the DOE
has been reluctant to implement these
changes.
Metal detectors were not a huge topic
of concern for the 40 schools in CEC 24,
and the co-president said that requests for
scanners are “dependent on occurrences”
in schools.
Back in March 2018, Mayor Bill de
Blasio held a meeting at the Vanderbilt
YMCA to talk school safety with children
in New York City public schools,
including the use of metal detectors on
the students. Several students, including
ones from local Queens schools, said that
they did not believe that metal detectors
were benefi cial to their safety, and instead
made them feel “targeted and criminalized”
as reported by Patch.
Two of the Queens high schools
that were represented at the town hall
were Rockaway Park High School For
Environmental Sustainability and John
Bowne High School in Flushing.
John Bowne High School is a Queens
school that has implemented the use of
metal detectors aft er an incident where
three teenagers were charged with stabbing
a fellow classmate. Days later, three
other students were caught with knives
while going through the metal detectors.
Th ough the school has not implemented
full-time scanners, the students do
undergo “random scanning” as reported
by QNS.com.
According to the nyc.gov website, the
NYPD announced a safety initiative in
July 2016 that required students at public
middle schools and high schools to pass
through metal scanning devices similar
to those used to screen airline passengers.
Th e initiative was a collaboration between
the NYPD and NYCDOE as a “vital security
initiative and signifi cant deterrent to
weapons and violence.”
During the 2015 to 2016 school year,
it was reported that there were 88 scanning
sites in the more than 1,000 public
schools throughout the city. Seventynine
of these sites are “full time” while
the other nine are “part time” or “random”
scanning sites. Full-time scanning
takes place on a continuous, daily basis
during school hours and aft er school and
on weekends whenever the school is in
use. Part-time scanning occurs on a random
basis throughout the week.
Other schools undergo “unannounced
scanning” where the NYPD School Safety
Division brings the scanning equipment
down to the selected school to use for the
day. According to information from the
initiative, this type of scanning is usually
randomized, but sometimes it is implemented
in response to the conditions or
circumstances surrounding the particular
school.
According to an infographic from
WNYC, 20 percent of Queens students
went through metal detectors in the 2013
to 2014 school year. Queens is the borough
with the second-to-least amount of
students going through metal detectors.
Th e borough with the most metal detectors
is the Bronx, followed by Brooklyn,
Manhattan and in last place, Staten
Island. It was reported that 91,114 students
in New York public schools go
through metal detectors in some capacity.
Cameras coming to Whitestone school after security scare
BY SUZANNE MONTEVERDI
smonteverdi@qns.com / @smont76
A Whitestone school that was the site
of some concern earlier this year will
soon see a security upgrade, a lawmaker
announced on Wednesday.
On May 16, Councilman Paul Vallone
announced a $425,000 funding commitment
to install a complete Internet
Protocol Digital Video Surveillance
(IPDVS) system at P.S. 184, located at
21st Road and 163rd Street. It will be
included in the fi scal year 2019 budget.
Th e system enables school offi cials to
view live and archived camera images
directly on their computer stations and
provides remote viewing capability to
authorized city personnel, according to
the northeast Queens representative.
Th e announcement arrives about a
month aft er the councilman’s call to the
mayor to make an additional $100 million
investment to install IPDVS systems
in the city’s schools, where approximately
one-third are without the modern security
measure. In Vallone’s District 19, 62
percent of schools do not have the system
installed.
Th e push was infl uenced in part by
an incident at P.S. 184 in March, during
which a suspicious man reportedly
entered the school during school hours.
Parents and community members attended
District 25’s monthly Community
Education Council meeting on March 8
to voice their concerns.
“At the Community Education Council
District 25 meeting in March, I made a
promise to the parents at 184 and on
May 16 I am fulfi lling that promise by
committing to funding a full security
camera system for the school,” Vallone
said.
Th e councilman again called on Mayor
Bill de Blasio “to make school safety a priority.”
“Unfortunately, while this is great step
forward, there are still many schools
throughout Queens and the city that continue
lacking security systems and only
the mayor can provide the amount of
funding needed to put cameras in every
school,” he continued.
At their monthly meeting on May 14,
Community Board 7 voted in favor of
sending a “School Safety Resolution” to
the area’s city, state and federal elected
offi cials.
Th e group called for a series of protocol
changes to be “immediately implemented,”
including providing security at
all exterior school doors, keypad-entry
locks on classroom doors and increased
interaction with school safety and NYPD
personnel.
“In the wake of recent gun violence
in school across the United States,
Community Board 7 Queens honors and
remembers all victims and survivors of
gun violence and we implore the city and
state of New York to do everything possible
to keep our schools, our children,
our teachers, and our communities safe,”
the resolution reads.
Photo courtesy of Weprin’s offi ce
NYS Assemblyman David Weprin
Photo via Google Maps
A photo taken of P.S. 184 in November 2017
Photo via YouTube/Andre Christopher Rivera
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