Mayor Adams, Protect Our Babies Now!
By Quiann Simpkins
In a day and age where mass shootings are plaguing America along with rampant gun violence, we can not afford to second guess ourselves on safety. There have been mass shootings in malls, shopping centers, supermarkets, and concerts but the place that has been targeted most are our nation’s schools. You may ask yourself why is this occurring so often in our schools? The answer is simple: they are a soft target; they are very easy to access and have very little safety measures to gain entry. Here in NYC, the safety measures are a lot more extensive and, although unarmed, the NYPD School Safety Division has, for the last 52 years, avoided a mass shooting in our schools.
Through the daily use of metal detection, whether it be a walk-through, magnetometer, scanning machine, or a hand wand, weapons are being detected along with challenging visitors and daily patrols inside and outside of the schools. Our methods are effective. There is a small group of nonsensical people and children who don’t understand that School Safety Agents aren’t Police and these young people have been brainwashed to believe that they don’t need physical safety, not knowing that physical safety is everything. If an individual isn’t physically safe, there will be no social and emotional safety to speak of.
I am not only a School Safety Agent, but I’m also a client as well as a founding member of the NYC School Safety Coalition, a group made up of advocates, aspiring politicians, clergy, and community leaders. Most of us are parents and have children in these schools.
Recently Mayor Adams, as well as the chancellor, have been having press conferences about school safety but never including school safety voices. As of late, Mayor Adams has been calling on parents to get involved.
Well, we are here waiting for your office to take a meeting with us – the major stakeholders – and you have ignored us while taking meetings with BLM and drill rappers as well as those in corporate America.
This makes no sense to me because you need to be having talks with the people who do the work of keeping the city’s children safe while worrying about the safety of our own children as well as our own safety.
There is a lot of talk around violence interruption and incorporating this method into the schools. This is laughable at best because these organizations haven’t even proved effective in the streets.
For almost 2 years, the New York School Safety Coalition has held press conferences and rallies all over the city and we have been warning everyone – including you, Mayor Adams – that the violence plaguing the streets would spill over into schools, and it did just that.
We are calling on you, Mayor Adams, to do something. Take action – and that action is having a meeting with the NYC School Safety Coalition so we, the boots on the ground, can tell you what we need to do to bring about complete safety.
These things include hiring more agents, raising the starting salary, dropping down the 7-year time frame to reach top pay, reinstating our uniform task force units, and last – but certainly not least – every school should have scanning just like all state, local, and federal buildings, which include your offices at City Hall. Shouldn’t our children deserve the same level of safety as the hypocritical politicians who want to be kept safe?
COLUMBINE, SANDYHOOK, PARKLAND, AND NOW UVALDE CAN HAPPEN HERE AND IT WILL HAPPEN HERE IF YOU CONTINUE TO NOT PUT OUR CHILDREN AND SCHOOL SAFETY FIRST!!!
Sincerely yours,
Quiann Simpkins
Mother of Two (2) Current High School Students
Mother of Two (2) NYC Public Schools Graduates
Army Veteran
16-year School Safety Agent
