A gun was seized inside Jill Chaifetz Transfer High School in the South Bronx on Friday, marking the eighth firearm recovered at the campus since the school year began just over five weeks ago. Police took a 19-year-old student into custody in connection with the incident, which happened just before 2:15 p.m., though no one was hurt and no official charges had been filed as of Friday.
The South Bronx school, located at 778 Forest Avenue, is housed in a building attended by around 900 students and has only two NYPD school safety agents assigned to keep order, according to News 12 Bronx. Per sources cited in that report, the school does not scan for weapons, leaving a major gap in how firearms might be caught before they reach classrooms and hallways. The school year started September 10, which means eight guns have surfaced in just over a month of classes.
Just a week earlier, on October 9, a student allegedly threatened to shoot another student during a fight at the school, per sources cited by the same outlet. News 12 Bronx reported it requested a statement from the New York City Department of Education about Friday's incident, but the agency had not responded as of publication.
A Building Built for Vulnerable Students, Not Metal Detectors
Jill Chaifetz Transfer High School operates in partnership with the community-based organization BronxWorks, providing alternative education tailored for over-age and under-credited students, according to the school's own description of its mission on its website. The campus sits inside Building X184, a co-located facility that also houses South Bronx Academy for Applied Media, Academy of Public Relations, and District 75 special education programs, per facility documents posted by the school.
Directory and facility data from InsideSchools describes the building at 778 Forest Avenue as lacking permanent metal detectors. Hundreds of students across several distinct programs share the building.
Chancellor's Regulation A-432 governs how metal detector searches are supposed to work in New York City public schools, requiring a principal or designated administrator to be present during scanning operations meant to keep weapons off campus, according to the New York City Department of Education's own regulation. Under New York Penal Law § 265.01-a, knowingly possessing a firearm on school grounds is a Class E felony, punishable by up to four years in prison or five years of probation, per Justia's summary of the statute.
Part of a Wider Pattern Across Bronx Schools
Friday's seizure follows a string of similar incidents at Bronx schools this year. In February, school safety staff and NYPD officers recovered a loaded Smith & Wesson handgun from a 17-year-old student at Bronx Prep Charter School after the student walked past metal detectors, Hoodline previously reported. In September, a firearm was recovered from a 15-year-old student at Eximius College Prep in the Bronx the same day a 17-year-old was detained with a gun at a Brooklyn high school.
Citywide, NYPD school safety personnel confiscated 4,201 weapons and dangerous instruments, including 15 firearms, from New York City public schools during the 2024-2025 school year through April 2025, down from nearly 4,800 items over the same period the prior year, per Chalkbeat's reporting cited in earlier Hoodline coverage. At the same time, uniformed NYPD school safety agent staffing fell roughly 28 percent over five years, dropping from about 5,000 agents to 3,600 as of March 2025 — a decline that leaves campuses like Jill Chaifetz Transfer High School stretched thin with just two agents on site.
NYPD Commissioner Jessica Tisch reported in June that police had seized over 2,000 illegal firearms citywide during the first half of 2026, with roughly 25 percent of those recoveries occurring in the Bronx, underscoring how the borough's broader gun availability problem keeps surfacing inside school walls. Taken together, the recurring recovery of firearms at Bronx high schools reflects a complex intersection between community gun availability, campus security infrastructure, and school safety staffing levels. For now, the question of how a building serving hundreds of over-age and under-credited students can go without permanent metal detectors remains unresolved, even as the gun count at Jill Chaifetz Transfer stands at eight barely a month and a half into the school year.
