Park Slope Collegiate teens were joined by Mayor de Blasio's 17-year-old son yesterday as they protested the actions of safety officers and police in their school. Dante de Blasio and his debate team from Brooklyn Tech traveled over to Park Slope to show support for the rally, and while they arrived too late to participate in the march and listen to speeches, they lingered to speak to some of their fellow students.
The demonstration was sparked by an incident on Thursday, when Noah, a 19-year-old senior, showed up for school with a pin holding his broken glasses together.
He was stopped by school safety agents who were processing students as they entered through metal detectors, according to a letter sent out by the Parent Teacher Association. The safety agents reportedly told the student the pin in his glasses was a safety risk, and proceeded to confiscate the item. When the senior tried to get his glasses back, he was restrained by the officers, who "brought him to the ground, pinned him down, and handcuffed him," the PTA wrote in their letter. Principal Jill Bloomberg then reportedly took the student to her office to write down what happened, when NYPD officers, who weren't part of the school safety team, arrived and handcuffed him.
"He was dragged out, placed under arrest, and held in a room by NYPD officers without his parents or any of our staff present," the PTA wrote, noting the Principal pled with the officers to stop. The senior was eventually released. NYPD spokeswoman Kim Royster told DNAinfo that a safety agent received minor injuries from the incident, and as such the student was issued a summons for disorderly conduct. The Internal Affairs Bureau is now investigating the incident.
According to Katie Mosher-Smith from the school's PTA, the makeshift fix for the glasses wasn't a new addition. "He'd been wearing this pin for several weeks. I'd seen it on him a few times," Mosher-Smith told NY1.
This is not the first time Park Slope Collegiate students have raised concerns about their treatment by NYPD officers. In October of last year, over a hundred students—mostly from that particular high school, along with others from the schools that share the John Jay campus at 237 Seventh Avenue—teachers and local residents gathered in the area to share their stories of teens being harassed. Officers were accused of shooing away black teens, with one student telling reporters, "Police have heckled me, patted me down for suspicious activity, apparently... They've run me down the street, almost hit me with a car."
