Lax Security Cited After High School Shooting

Last Tuesday, on what would have been the 73rd birthday of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., shots rang through the hallway of an Upper West Side high school named after the civil rights leader.

A student at the high school, which is located on Amsterdam Ave. and 66th St., shot and wounded two students in the back. Both boys—Andrel Napper, 17, and Andre Wilkens, 16—have been treated and released from St. Vincent’s Hospital in Manhattan, according to a hospital spokesperson. It was the first in-school shooting in New York City in more than seven years.

The suspect in the shooting, Vincent Rodriguez, who turned 18 years old that day, was arrested his home on West 90th St. on Friday. He was arraigned on charges of attempted murder, police said. According to the victims’ reports, Rodriguez was retaliating against them for taunting his girlfriend the previous week. Margie Feinberg, a spokesperson for the Board of Education, said that details of how Rodriguez got past the school’s metal detectors could not be given, as police are still investigating the incident.

Teachers at Martin Luther King Jr. High School said that security in the building has been slack. People entering the school are asked to show school identification and pass through metal detectors. But teachers and students reported that it is possible for students to sneak through unguarded side doors that are locked from the outside but can be opened by their friends from the inside.

“It’s been a constant concern with the faculty and the student body,” teacher Octavia Melian told Safer School News. The New York Times reported that ten cases of weapon possession in the school have been reported since September. The school’s security coordinator, Milton Stiller, resigned in November when school officials refused to look in to his request for increased security.

Though administrators at the school are referring to the shooting as an isolated incident, New York City Schools Chancellor Harold Levy met with the Board of Education yesterday to review the high school’s security policies. As a result of Levy’s meeting, security changes may be made at other city schools. Indeed, the security policies of other schools in the area, such as Brandeis High School at 145 West 84th St., have been questioned in recent years.

"Clearly, there was a breach of security in that somebody got in the building with a gun," Levy told the Times. "We need to make sure that doesn’t happen again.”

“The changes [to security systems] are being reviewed as we speak by each school principal,” Feinberg said on Tuesday. “The Chancellor is ordering all the principals to review their own security plans.”

The Chancellor has not made any specific orders on how the security systems in city schools should be altered.