Buffalo, N.Y. (WBEN) - In a scene that brought back memories from earlier this year, a 16-year-old McKinley High School student was arrested and charged in connection with large fights that occurred outside the school Tuesday afternoon.
The student was charged with obstruction and resisting arrest, according to Buffalo Police.
The fights occurred at dismissal and no injuries were reported.
The Buffalo School District released the following statement late Tuesday in response to the fights:
Student violence compromises safety and will not be allowed, on the way to, or leaving from any Buffalo Public School (BPS). Schools must be safe zones. Unfortunately, during dismissal from McKinley High School, several students took it upon themselves and without permission, bypassed their special NFTA buses. Those students then traveled to the Elmwood and Amherst Street intersection where they created an unsafe environment by participating in multiple fights.
The District is requesting that parents and caregivers of McKinley High School students speak with their children to inform them that, effective immediately, any student that is approved for busing is expected to board their assigned special NFTA bus, in front of the school, immediately at dismissal. Those individuals not following the specified guidelines may be subject to disciplinary consequences. This expectation was shared with the parent body at McKinley this evening via robocall and text and will be reviewed tomorrow with all students.
McKinley High was the scene of a stabbing and shooting outside the school in February during which a 14-year-old was stabbed multiple times.
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To an anti-violence organization like Buffalo Peacemakers, who have been working closely with students at McKinley High School for months now, this act of violence breaking out is particularly frustrating.
"We are doing whatever we can. We've increased the number of forces that we have out there on the ground, we've reached out, we've added additional programming for youth, particularly troubled youth that have all this angst in them that want to fight each other and want to beat each other. We've reached out to them, we have have mentoring infrastructure," said Pastor James Giles from Buffalo Peacemakers.
"The school has been gracious and the district has been gracious enough to try to escalate our program. There's a lot of bureaucracy with that, though. I've always maintained that we need to have individual peacemakers inside the school, that's where all the Intel is being generated at. And the students - because they take to us, they know us, and we know them, we're out there in the community - they tell us they would have alerted us to that thing that's going on. We didn't find out 'til later, we responded as quickly as we could. So we had about four or five of our peacemakers present at the time the melee happened, but there's some other systems, policy and protocols that need to take place concerning the exiting of schools, in general, but more specific to McKinley."
To Pastor Giles' knowledge, the fight broke out between a group of students from Riverside and a group of students from McKinley. He believes the fight could have been avoided, if not for additional help from the Peacemakers inside the school.
"They had been spreading some chatter, we didn't have a chance to respond or get the Intel quickly like we would have gotten, I believe, if we were inside the schools. But we did finally get it and kind of sort out this stuff, and we're just trying to identify the players now, to make sure that there's no follow up to this madness," Pastor Giles said.
Now in the days and weeks to come following this recent incident at McKinley High School, Pastor Giles and the rest of the Buffalo Peacemakers will be looking to continue their work at the school, while also trying to get inside the school to ensure these acts of violence don't continue.
"We want to dissuade, intervene, but more importantly prevent any type of violence from happening among our youth, like at any of these schools. Not just McKinley, at any of the schools, or any of the corners, or any of the spaces in the train station. Wherever we're posted up, that's our purpose for being there is to prevent this type of fighting from taking place, this type of harm one student to another from transpiring," Pastor Giles said. "That's why we're there, that's our purpose of being there. And the more support that we get to make sure that we're there in adequate numbers, the more impactful we're going to be. It's hard to cover all the bases and all the spaces, because the angst that you see generated among our youth, it's a huge number of our youth that have this kind of problem with each other."
While the violence at McKinley High School on Tuesday may certainly be seen as a step backwards towards ensuring the safety of all at the school, Pastor Giles says the mission of the Buffalo Peacemakers will remain the same going forward with students.
"There are other elements in the administration, other elements among security forces where we believe they need to do something just a little different. Kind of tweak that a little bit and be more hands on, in terms of monitoring the exiting of students," he said. "We need assistance in making sure that they're getting on their getting on their buses. We'll add other people to this equation over at McKinley, but at the same time, we all have to collectively be working at this. The administration, the security, as well as community-based agencies. We've got to do this as a group strategically, and we'll be able to put our arms around this."
More of our conversation with Pastor Giles is available in the player below: