CHARLOTTE, N.C. — Several Charlotte-area high school students will soon have to pass through body scanners before heading to class.
Tuesday, Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools Superintendent Earnest Winston announced body scanners would start going in schools after a record number of guns were found this school year.
Winston said the district is purchasing the body scanners that will be implemented in seven schools in the first phase, including Hopewell High School, Mallard Creek High School, Garinger High School, Harding University High School, North Mecklenburg High School, West Charlotte High School and Julius Chambers High School.
The seven schools were chosen to test how CMS will handle body scanners in high schools.
"The body scanners is something that a lot of us have been asking for as far as security-wise," Will Adams the founder of the anti-violence organization Team TruBlue said.
While he's glad to see action being taken, he is concerned about one aspect of where CMS decided to place the body scanners: They're all predominantly Black high schools.
CMS data shows each of the seven schools chosen to get body scanners have more Black students than white, Asian, Hispanic and multiracial children.
Three of the schools are represented by Board of Education member Rhonda Cheek. She said race was not a contributing factor when choosing the location of the scanners.
"The demographics of each one of these schools are vastly different," Cheek said. "When you look at socio-economic, and even the makeup of the population, they're not all the same. They're all very different."
CMS said in a statement it choose schools based on "who had the highest number of serious safety incidents this school year."
All the schools that were chosen had at least one gun on campus this school year.
But Cheek said that’s not the only reason they were chosen.
"Our metric included a mixture of buildings so that they could see how things worked in different types of facilities," Cheek explained. "And where were we having the most issues."
School staff, not board members, chose what schools would be included in the pilot program.
Adams said the district must be transparent in how it makes decisions in regards to safety in schools.
“Are we focusing on putting up a machine so the kids can walk through or are we really focusing on getting this violence out of CMS?" Adams asked.
Students at Cochrane Collegiate Academy and Hopewell High School will pilot the clear backpack program first before it rolls out to other schools, CMS announced Wednesday.
In January 2022, CMS launched the Say Something Anonymous Reporting System allowing middle and high school students to report concerns anonymously when they hear or see something at their school.
In response to growing violence and guns found on campus, CMS started randomly searching students for weapons again at the beginning of the school year, but district records previously reviewed by WCNC Charlotte revealed those safety screenings did not discover any guns.
CMS data show the unannounced screenings of more than 6,200 students in 300 classrooms at more than 20 schools in the first half of the school year led to the confiscation of 29 knives, 12 stun guns, and 79 pepper spray, but no guns.
Since stolen weapons have previously found their way into the possession of students, WCNC Charlotte has also reviewed the number of stolen guns countywide.
The 1,099 guns reported stolen from January through September 2021 was a 36% increase from the prior year, according to the CMPD data reviewed by WCNC Charlotte. Reports of stolen guns have increased every year in Charlotte since 2018. Even so, the agency maintains in most cases, there is not a law that applies to people leaving a gun inside their car.
From 2016 through September 2021, records show the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police Department has only charged or cited 12 people with failure to store a gun to protect a minor. Court records show of those, at least four cases were dismissed and two resulted in convictions, while others remain pending.
Contact Shamarria Morrison at smorrison@wcnc.com and follow her on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.
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