Over the past ten years, more than 3,400 shootings have happened within 500 feet of a school. This analysis maps over 2,500 schools across New York City to show how enforcing safe school zones can help protect students.
Every NYC school ranked by shootings within 500 feet since 2016. Each incident counts toward every school in range — full exposure, not just the closest.
| # | School | Category | Borough | Shootings ≤500 ft | Students | Nearest |
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How often does gun violence occur within 500 feet of a New York City school?
A distance of 500 feet was chosen because it is approximately one to two city blocks and matches the school-zone distance already recognized in several New York State public safety laws. Using a common distance for every school allows incidents to be measured consistently across the city.
The analysis combines several public government datasets to identify where schools are located, where shootings occurred, and how many students attend each school.
The primary dataset consists of every shooting incident reported by the New York City Police Department between January 2016 and December 2025. Each incident includes the date, location, and geographic coordinates recorded by the NYPD.
School locations were obtained from the New York State Education Department's directory of active public and non-public schools. School addresses were converted into geographic coordinates so they could be analyzed alongside shooting locations.
Student enrollment was added using the most recent enrollment records published by both the New York City Department of Education and the New York State Education Department. Together, these sources provide enrollment information for nearly 95 percent of all schools included in the study.
This build uses NYPD shooting incidents recorded citywide from January 2016 through December 2025. Each record carries a date, time, borough, precinct, location setting (street, multi-dwelling building, and so on), and a latitude/longitude. NYPD now publishes shootings, victims, and offenders as three linked tables; this map uses the incident-level Shootings table.
data.cityofnewyork.us — Shootings (2006–Present)2,867 active public and non-public school sites citywide. The registry supplies each school's popular and legal name, institution type (public / non-public), grade organization, and county; street addresses were geocoded to coordinates with Geocodio. One record that geocoded roughly 90 miles upstate was dropped as a bad match.
p12.nysed.gov — IRS Directory of Public & Nonpublic Schools (geocoded via Geocodio)Roughly 1.08 million building outlines citywide. Used at display time to place each map dot against the face of a real nearby building, rather than on a rooftop centroid or in the middle of the street.
data.cityofnewyork.us — Building FootprintsAbout 136,500 road-bed centerline segments. Used to spread co-located incidents naturally along the surrounding streets. CSCL is itself published in NY State Plane (EPSG:2263), the same foot-based system used for all distance measurement here.
data.cityofnewyork.us — NYC Street Centerline (CSCL)Boundaries clipped to the shoreline, used for the context outlines and to attribute each school to a borough. From City Planning's “Bytes of the Big Apple.”
data.cityofnewyork.us — Borough Boundaries (DCP)Per-school student enrollment for public and charter schools. Joined to each school by its DOE / charter DBN; the most recent year (2024–25) is used. Published by NYC Public Schools.
infohub.nyced.org — Demographic Snapshot (School tab)Per-school enrollment for non-public (private and parochial) schools, summed across grades. Joined by the 12-digit SED / BEDS code carried for every school; the 2025–26 BEDS-day count is used.
p12.nysed.gov — Nonpublic Enrollment by GradeEach school was represented by a single geographic point. A 500-foot buffer was then created around every school point to define its surrounding study area.
Every recorded shooting was measured against these buffers using the incident's original geographic coordinates. When a shooting fell within 500 feet of more than one school, it was assigned only to the nearest school. This approach prevents a single incident from being counted multiple times, but it also produces lower estimates of school exposure than the actual exposure is likely to be.
All distance calculations were performed using New York State Plane coordinates, a mapping system designed to provide accurate measurements in feet across New York City.
The interactive map is designed to accurately represent the data while remaining easy to read.
Some shootings share identical coordinates because they occurred at the same reported location. If these incidents were drawn directly on the map, they would overlap and appear as a single point.
To improve visibility, overlapping incidents are distributed along nearby streets and building fronts using New York City's official street centerline and building footprint data. This adjustment affects only how points are displayed on the map, but does not alter the number of incidents within the 500 foot buffer, which means all statistics, distances, rankings, and counts are calculated using the original NYPD coordinates. The visual distribution of this data is solely a cartographic technique to enhance readability, but does not alter the overall analysis.
School enrollment was incorporated to estimate how many students attend schools located near recorded shootings.
Public and charter school enrollment was matched using official Department of Education identifiers, while private and parochial schools were matched using New York State Education Department identification codes. When enrollment information was unavailable for a school, no estimate was assigned rather than assuming an enrollment of zero.
This analysis measures proximity, not causation or victimization. It identifies where shootings occurred in relation to schools but does not determine whether students or school staff were involved or harmed.
The methodology is intentionally conservative to avoid overcounting recorded shooting incidents. Distances are measured from each school's mapped location, and every shooting is attributed to the nearest eligible school within 500 feet. These choices reduce the possibility of overstating exposure rates while providing a consistent method for comparing schools across New York City. One limitation is that this data includes all shootings within 500 feet of a school, regardless of the time of day, which means that students may not have been present at the time of the shooting.
This analysis relies solely on publicly available government data and applies the same measurement process to every school to establish a transparent and reproducible assessment of gun violence near New York City schools. Since the data was collected directly from city sources, any potential errors in geocoding, naming conventions, or other metadata may be unresolved and require additional data cleaning and ground truthing.