By far, Mecklenburg schools log the most gun charges of all NC schools
When the 23rd gun was found on a Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools campus in December – a 10-year high for a school year not even halfway completed – it was treated like a crisis point.
Demands for action reached a crescendo and CMS accelerated plans to set up body scanners in several schools. The district also quickly rolled out an app for students to report threats.
Those measures appear to have helped. Since December, seven more firearms have been recovered on CMS campuses, though that number includes two guns found this week, one at Harding University High School and one at Coulwood STEM Academy.
But while the gun threat in CMS now looks less extreme than it did just six months ago, data obtained by The Charlotte Observer show that the district’s gun problems have persisted for more than a decade.
Mecklenburg County schools have led the state in firearms offenses on school grounds for at least each of the last 11 years, according to data provided by the state Department of Public Safety.
The state provided data on the county level, as opposed to the district level, but since CMS is the only public school district in Mecklenburg County, the vast majority of these offenses were in CMS schools.
Since the start of that year, Mecklenburg County schools have accounted for nearly 23% of all firearms offenses in North Carolina, even though CMS enrolls less than 10% of students in the state.
The Charlotte Observer sent school district officials the firearm offense data last week with several questions. The district acknowledged the questions but did not answer them. Those questions included asking the district to confirm the state’s gun data and to describe what action CMS has taken prior to this year to address the problem.
Between 2010 and 2021, Mecklenburg County schools had 323 firearm offenses, state data show. To be clear, these numbers don’t mean that 323 guns were recovered on campuses over this period. The offenses include both possession and use of a firearm on campus.
There can be multiple firearm offenses charged when only a single gun is found, according to the state Department of Public Safety.
The county with the next highest number of firearm offenses was Guilford County with 76. Wake County, home to the only district in the state with more students than CMS, had 73 firearm offenses in that span, more than four times fewer than Mecklenburg County schools.
Even when you break down these offenses by student population, CMS fares poorly.
Mecklenburg County schools averaged about 2.3 firearm offenses per 1,000 students between 2010 and 2021, according to an Observer analysis of the state’s data that is based on the most recent enrollment numbers. That was the eighth highest rate in the state. All counties with higher rates of gun offenses than Mecklenburg were small districts with fewer than 10,000 students.
Wake County schools had a rate of 0.5 gun offenses per 1,000 students, the analysis shows.
‘We’ve been very fortunate’
In light of school shooting tragedies across the country in recent years, CMS is lucky to have avoided something similar, said Nicola Bivens, a Johnson C. Smith University professor of criminology.
“We’ve been very fortunate in Charlotte that there have not been more incidents, given the number of guns that have been recovered,” she said, acknowledging a 2018 shooting at Butler High School in Matthews that killed a 16-year-old student. Authorities determined that to be a case of bullying that spun out of control.
The Charlotte Observer has asked the school district and local police multiple times since last fall about what they have learned about why students are bringing gun to campus and whether they charge students or otherwise respond when they do. Both departments have declined to discuss specifics of these cases.
The state Department of Public Safety in 2019 conducted a survey of students who brought guns onto campuses that found 75% of them did so for protection.
Bivens said that without knowing why students are bringing guns onto campus it’s hard to know exactly how to combat the issue.
“Once they identify why the guns are present, then I think they can start coming up with some type of solutions,” she said. “One gun is too many, but without knowing where they came from it doesn’t tell us anything.”
And while some measures taken by CMS to deter guns on campus – like body scanners – appear to have helped the district over the short term, experts question their long-term effectiveness.
“Those, like scanners or cameras or lockdown doors, what the research would show is that those haven’t prevented the mass shootings in schools that we’ve seen, first of all,” said Paul Smokowski, a violence-prevention researcher and founder of the North Carolina Youth Violence Prevention Center.
“Those hardening approaches keep community, keep volunteers and even keep parents out of school as much as they’re keeping guns out. But the metal detectors look good. When you walk up to them, they’re more foreboding.”
Smokowski said there are other approaches – one of which CMS is using – that can be more effective over the long term. Those can include encouraging students to be more connected and more willing to come forward when they hear of a threat.
In February, CMS launched an app called “Say Something,” which students and staff can use to report threats. All students grades 6-12 have been trained to use it and since February the district has received more than 1,000 tips through the app.
In light of the data showing Mecklenburg County schools’ persistent gun problems, Bivens said it’s important for CMS to keep working with students to improve safety.
“I can’t imagine what it’s like to send somebody to school and have them not come home, she said. “I think CMS needs to realize any day could be the day. Everybody needs to take that approach.”
This story was originally published June 8, 2022 at 6:00 AM with the headline "By far, Mecklenburg schools log the most gun charges of all NC schools."
