Prometheus 6

“I feel naked,” said Krystal Corchado, 15, an eighth grader whose phone was seized. “I feel like I lost something very important to me.”

Around the corner from the school, a group of six students who had managed to hold onto their phones discussed their narrow escapes.

Ian Newcomb pulled his blue Samsung phone from his pocket to demonstrate how it evaded capture. “It’s nearly all plastic, so the metal detectors didn’t pick it up,” he said. “It was in my pocket the whole time.” [P6: Kid sounds like Batman...]

Sweep at School Turns Up a Trove of Electronic Contraband
By JULIE BOSMAN

When Olivia Lara-Gresty saw the metal detectors at the entrance of Middle School 54 on the Upper West Side, she turned around and ran home to ditch her contraband before joining her sixth-grade class.

The cellphone police had arrived.

Not everyone was so savvy. The Police Department was there to carry out a random sweep for prohibited items, requiring all 900-plus students at the school to walk through metal detectors before entering.

Their total haul included 404 cellphones, 69 iPods, 23 other electronic devices, two knives and one imitation gun.

“People were crying,” said Samantha Haber, 14, an eighth grader.

Officially, the X-ray scans are meant to catch dangerous items. But since the unannounced sweeps began in April 2006, they have mostly detected cellphones, infuriating parents who see them as lifelines and have loudly opposed the checks.

The Education Department first banned “communication devices” around 1988, when the electronic toy of choice was a beeper. But the rule was not strictly enforced until last year, when the Bloomberg administration took action to prohibit cellphones in schools.

The sweep yesterday was one of the biggest so far since the crackdown. An unannounced visit to a Queens school on Wednesday yielded only 40 cellphones, 16 iPods and 33 unspecified electronic devices. The police collected only 83 cellphones during a sweep at a Bronx school a week ago, but also took 37 items like headphones, batteries and can openers — all forbidden.

According to rules set by Middle School 54’s principal, Elana Elster, the items confiscated yesterday can be picked up only by parents, and no earlier than Tuesday.