The number of firearms confiscated in U.S. schools is escalating, reflecting a society grappling with a surge in gun violence, and Perth Amboy schools were placed on lockdown today, March 22, 2024, after a student brought a gun on campus, turning a nationwide problem into local emergency.
The Perth Amboy Police Department confirmed a young male suspect was apprehended without incident and no injuries were reported.
The lockdown began around midday following a call about a student acting suspiciously and possibly carrying a weapon near a high school. The investigation revealed the suspect did not have a gun in their possession.
School officials initiated a shelter-in-place procedure as a precaution, particularly for student safety during the initial investigation. The lockdown was lifted within 90 minutes across all affected schools.
This incident comes one year after a student was stabbed walking home from school, sparking calls for increased security measures in the district.
The surge in gun seizures on school campuses mirrors a sharp increase in school shootings, creating a climate of fear and uncertainty among students and parents. Despite these alarming trends, many incidents go unreported or underreported, particularly in communities with high levels of violence or limited local news coverage.
Perth Amboy is also victim to a broken political system, where big money and cheating has saddled the city with incompetent leadership that is ill-prepared to restore safety. Instead, after decades of making strides that improved public safety, crime is again on the rise.
Parents remain divided on proposals for armed guards and metal detectors, with some concerned it would create a prison-like atmosphere in schools, but a steep increase in crime and mayhem on the roads, as demonstrated by an illegal St.Partick’s Day pop-up road rally at the foot of the Victory Bridge shows that residents are less safe since Mayor Helmin Caba appointed himself as the city’s police director.
On Sunday, March 17, 2024, the Perth Amboy Police Department responded to a chaotic scene at the foot of the Victory Bridge, where drivers engaged in “donuts,” blocking traffic and endangering bystanders on Route 35 and Convery Boulevard.
Traffic was tied up as a crowd of around 300 people gathered to witness the risky maneuvers even when drivers disregarding safety protocols came dangerously close to spectators and caused debris to fly around.
Caba says he hired an unprecedented number of police officers, but the largest expansion of the city’s law enforcement payroll in history has not made residents any safer, according to State Police statistics and data contained in the Mayor’s glossy ‘State of the City’ booklet.
Since Caba became mayor, more than three times as many rapes were reported compared with the three previous years. The city experienced twice as many arsons as it did during the same time before Caba was elected mayor, and the number of auto thefts and aggravated assaults also increased.
At the same time, although taxpayers are spending more on police salaries, the vast majority of crimes reported in Perth Amboy go unsolved year after year.
Caba’s administration triggered a national conversation about injustice after a video surfaced on YouTube exposing Perth Amboy police officers who stopped a group of 30 or 40 teenagers, primarily Black and Latino, handcuffed one of the teens, and confiscated several of the bicycles they had been riding through the city.
The Perth Amboy Police Department is urging the public to be cautious about spreading unverified information on social media and to contact Detective Nolasco at (732) 732-3879 with any information relevant to the investigation.
In the United States, where gun violence has soared since the pandemic began, Perth Amboy’s experience is one shared by students of every age in every state throughout the school year — a bleak reflection of a society awash in firearms.
Last school year, news reports identified more than 1,150 guns brought to K-12 campuses but seized before anyone fired them, according to an investigation by The Washington Post.
That’s more than six guns each day, on average. Nationwide, 1 in 47 school-age children — 1.1 million students — attended a school where at least one gun was found and reported on by the media in the 2022-2023 school year.
But the true number is almost certainly far higher.
A survey of 51 of the country’s largest school systems showed that 58 percent of seizures in those districts last academic year were never publicly reported by news organizations. Those same districts said the number of guns recovered on campus rose sharply in recent years, mirroring the growing prevalence of firearms in many other public places.
The guns were discovered practically everywhere — bookbags, lockers, trash cans, bathrooms, cars, pockets, purses, bulging behind waistbands and hidden above bathroom ceiling tiles. Some were brought by accident, others to show off. In many cases, police alleged, they were brought to end lives.