Mayor Eric Adams: Good afternoon. This afternoon we are breathing a sigh of relief because Cardozo High School students and their entire staff are all safe. Early today a 16-year-old student was arrested with a gun after posting on social media that he was going to quote, shoot the school up, end quote. While this is a horrific sign of the times, we are heartbroken that this threat ever existed in one of our high schools.
We are also grateful because this is the perfect example of the system working properly. After a student made that post we were able to respond and a tip was called into our partners at the FBI who in turn notified the NYPD.
Someone saw the post from the student and did what we ask all New Yorkers to do. If you see something, say something, but most importantly do something, and that is what they did. Our heroic officers did an excellent job of immediately responding to the scene working with the school staff and school safety agents to investigate the tip, find the student and recover the gun.
We are so grateful that this incident did not end tragically. We can only imagine what the families of this high school are going through right now. No family should be worried that if they send their child to school they might not come home that day.
We potentially saved the lives of a lot of students and staff today and I don't want to imagine a world where we would be making a different announcement right now. To the parents at Cardozo High School, hug your kids tonight. To the students and staff at Cardozo, take care of yourselves and talk to someone if you need to speak about this incident. Don't bottle it up inside.
I also want to mention another life saved today, a 16-year-old child who had the gun. Because if that 16-year-old had carried out this act he either would have ended up dead or in jail for many years. This was a failure of a society that allowed a 16-year-old to get so close to shooting up a school and potentially killing classmates and teachers.
So me standing here today and talking about what we have done to remove and recover 23,000 illegal guns off our streets since the start of this administration, it would be nothing to the parents if one gun in one young man's hands can do so much harm.
That's why we keep talking about upstream solutions. We must dam each river that feeds the sea of violence and involves our young people. We must also stop the flow of illegal guns along the iron pipeline. So I look forward to continuing to work with our federal partners to get the illegal guns off our streets. As the mayor of the city, I will continue to call for common sense gun reform at the national level and to work with every agency and every community to keep New York the safest big city in the nation.
And finally, I want to thank those brave police officers who responded quickly and our federal partners who coordinated and made sure that the information was in the hands of our law enforcement agencies here on the ground. The system worked, this is what we asked for, and this is what coordination looks like. As well as all of our New York City public school partners who did the right thing on the ground. I want to turn it over now to the police commissioner of the City of New York, Commissioner Tisch.
Police Commissioner Jessica Tisch: Thank you, sir. Good afternoon. As the mayor mentioned, I'm here to brief you on an incident that took place this morning at Benjamin Cardozo High School in Bayside, Queens.
The information I'm about to provide is preliminary and it's subject to change. At 10:17 AM, an Instagram user made a post that showed a photo of what appeared to be schoolwork on a desk and contained the caption, TSGMT, vow to shoot the school up. We believe TSGMT to mean “This [] gets me tight.” The FBI became aware of the post and their National Threat Operations Center notified our 911 call center at approximately 11:33 AM. The FBI agent provided account specific information including the Instagram account holder's username, date of birth, and the phone number associated with the account. They also provided a location based on the post's geo tag, Benjamin Cardozo High School at 57-00223rd Street in Queens.
Units from the 111 precinct first responded to the school at 11:45 where they met with the dean. With support from our intelligence division, NYPD school safety agents, and school personnel, our youth officers quickly identified the student who owned the Instagram account in question.
The student was quickly removed from his classroom without incident and brought to an empty conference room. In that conference room, the officers then dialed the phone number associated with the Instagram account, at which point one of the subject's phones rang, further verifying the account belonged to the student in question.
One of the student's parents was then contacted and consented to a search of the subject's belongings. In his backpack, officers recovered a black semi-automatic handgun, a 9mm Taurus GX4. The gun was loaded with 13 rounds in the magazine.
Also found in the student's possession were three phones. One in the school provided cell phone pouch, as well as two others. The student, a 16-year-old male in the 10th grade, was arrested at 12:36 p.m. and taken to the 111 precinct. We are currently withholding his identity because he is a minor, but we can say that he has no criminal history.
Our Detective Bureau and our Intelligence Division personnel will continue to work with the FBI as this is an ongoing investigation. Benjamin Cardozo High School is not a scanning school, and our records indicate that there have been no gun-related offenses reported there in the past year. I will be honest. As a mother of two young school-age boys, I am shaken. But as your police commissioner, I am resolute in ensuring that the NYPD does everything in our power to keep our children safe.
I have a message for all parents today. While this incident is terrifying, it is an example of the law enforcement apparatus at the federal and local levels doing everything right. It is literally the system, our protocols, our training, and our processes working just as they should. Now we'll take some questions.
Question: [Inaudible.]
Police Commissioner Tisch: As I said, the investigation is ongoing, and that's certainly something we're going to be looking at.
Question: [Inaudible.]
Police Commissioner Tisch: Investigation is ongoing.
Question: [Inaudible.]
Police Commissioner Tisch: Ongoing.
Question: [Inaudible.] I'm curious. Did you create a gang affiliation? And what was reported? Is it another student?
Police Commissioner Tisch: As I mentioned, we got the notification to our 911 call center from the FBI.
Question: [Inaudible.]
Police Commissioner Tisch: I do not.
Question: [Inaudible.]
Police Commissioner Tisch: Unfortunately, I think the answer to most of these questions is going to be the same, which is this just happened. And this investigation is ongoing. When we have more to say, we will share.
Question: [Inaudible.]
Police Commissioner Tisch: We do not have any more information on that at this time, other than the post was made at 10:17 and the student was arrested by 12:36.
Question: [Inaudible.]
Police Commissioner Tisch: We believe that he was in school when he made the post.
Question: [Inaudible.]
Police Commissioner Tisch: The investigation is ongoing.
Question: [Inaudible.]
Police Commissioner Tisch: One phone was found in the pouch and two others were not in the pouch but all three were on this person.
Mayor Adams: We had a shooting of a 31-year-old, who voices his concerns. We had a shooting at a Catholic school. We're seeing a 16-year-old with a handgun in a school and threatening to shoot the school up. We are screwing our children up. And we have to be honest with what we are doing.
We're sending them mixed messages. We're watching a high level of depression, suicidal thoughts. We're seeing them trying to figure out what is their right path. We could have been standing here making a different announcement. That has to trouble all of us.
I've said this for over two years now. Our children are being radicalized. Our children are being taken from us, and we have to refocus our attention on them. And if we don't, we're going to be responding to these we were luckies, or sometimes we're not going to be lucky.
We saw what happened in that Catholic school where those babies were shot. It would have been unimaginable to have to stand here and say a 16-year-old shot up a high school. If you're a parent, and if you're not concerned about what we're seeing unfold in our city, we have to question ourselves.
It's a 16-year-old [having] a semi-automatic weapon, or a weapon, and indicating he was going to take the life of other students. That is coming from somewhere. We have to recommit ourselves to saving these children. We're seeing it every day. Younger and younger are participating in these acts. This is a real wake-up call for our city and for our country. I just wanted to share that.
###