A Brooklyn student showed up for the first day of school Thursday packing more than notebooks and pens – as a loaded .22-caliber handgun was discovered in his backpack, officials said.
The 15-year-old boy was cuffed near a security checkpoint at the Brooklyn School for Career Development on Clermont Avenue in Fort Greene just before 9 a.m.
School safety agents discovered the Sig Sauer Mosquito when the bag was placed on a scanning device and immediately detained the boy.
“This incident is deeply troubling and we are working in close partnership with the NYPD as they conduct an investigation,” Education Department spokeswoman Toya Holness said in a statement.
“The NYPD immediately responded and safely confiscated the weapon. Safety always comes first and there is zero tolerance for weapons of any kind in schools,” she added.
The boy, who was not named, was questioned by police and charges against him were pending.
Claudine Jones, 31, whose 15-year-old daughter just started attending the school, said she witnessed the chaos near the metal detector.
“It was scary. I don’t know why he brought a gun to school,” she said. “He had no reaction. Everybody just came and stood out here until they locked him up.”
She said about 30 students were forced to leave the school and waited for an hour before being allowed back inside after cops arrested the teen.
“I’m glad they caught him before he did anything stupid,” she added. “I’m glad the kids are safe, nobody got hurt. On the first day of school — it’s crazy.”
Deborah Burgess, 60, who has a 15-year-old grandson at the school, also witnessed the disturbing scene.
“He was in the back of the car when I got here,” she said. “I thought he was very stupid to even try to come here with a gun. They really did seem like they had everything under control.”
Burgess said the incident showed the importance of metal detectors.
I’m glad the kids are safe, nobody got hurt. On the first day of school — it’s crazy.
- Claudine Jones
“It’s sad to say but sometimes it’s necessary. It stopped something that could have been very dangerous today,” she said.
Mayor de Blasio recently announced that metal-detector placements would be evaluated as part of an overall reform of campus disciplinary measures.
In 2015, a panel convened by de Blasio recommended that the city create guidelines on removing some detectors — because many students see them as “intrusive and denigrating.’’
Greg Floyd, the head of the school safety officers union, has warned against any rollback of metal detectors for the sake of both staff and students.
Floyd, who said that two knives also were confiscated by school safety officers Thursday, warned de Blasio against removing scanners.
“I think de Blasio is oblivious to what is going on in schools,” Floyd said Thursday. “We need these detectors in school. They save lives.”
De Blasio and Department of Education officials have said they would use school crime data to determine where detectors should be placed and how many are deployed.
During the summer, figures revealed that detectors found 37 of the 52 boxcutters smuggled into schools.
Of 52 knives, 36 were detected by scanners. In addition, eight of 20 gun busts came after the weapons were detected by scanners, according to NYPD data.
“How many weapons got into schools today where there weren’t any scanners? We don’t know,” Floyd said. “And that fact that kids are bringing guns and knives into schools knowing they have to go through detectors tells how much they disregard the rules.”