The NYPD said city education officials were stonewalling its probe into the fatal shooting of a potentially bullied Bronx schoolboy — after boss Mayor Zohran Mamdani publicly crowed about helping the teen’s kin.
But the Department of Education claimed Tuesday — the day after the Police Department’s public gripe — that it had cooperated with the investigation and provided all requested materials, although the NYPD would not confirm that and the DOE would not say whether it was complying with the investigation because of a subpoena.
Mamdani had bragged about his effort to get tragic slain 15-year-old Javits Frimpong’s mother a visa to travel from Ghana for her son’s funeral in the Big Apple — announcing Saturday that President Trump agreed to grant his request.
But just two days after the mayor positioned himself as a hero, NYPD Chief of Detectives Joseph Kenny claimed Mamdani’s Education Department was standing in the way of cops’ investigation of the bullying.
“We’re working with the Department of Education. Unfortunately, they’re not willing to give us that information without a subpoena, so we’re going through proper channels to get that,” Kenny said during a briefing with reporters.
As for whether the teen was bullied — as his father has suggested, Kenny said, “It’s one aspect that we’re looking at, as well as some others.”
Brooklyn Democratic state Assemblyman Kalman Yeger blasted the DOE’s alleged at least intial refusal to provide detectives with potential crucial information without a subpoena.
“In Mamdani’s New York, the public school system @NYCSchools refuses to help catch a child’s murderers,” Yeger fumed on X.
The DOE’s website says student information can be shared with a parent’s written consent, or with appropriate officials during a “health or safety emergency” without that permission.
Javits’ father, Thomas Frimpong, has said the principal at DreamYard Preparatory School called him two days before the shooting to tell him his son was having trouble with two other students.
“He said two boys were fighting with my son and the two boys got suspended,” the grieving dad said.
The father has said he believes the bullying was connected to his son’s killing.
Kenny said that so far, cops’ investigation shows the murdered teen was focused on his education — to the point where Javits sometimes purposefully left his phone at home so he could concentrate at school.
“He would come home, do his homework, and then he would jump on his phone periodically,” Kenny said. “But he was very, very into his schoolwork.”
Javits was walking to school when he was shot in the stomach near East 171st Street and Third Avenue around 9:25 a.m. Oct. 29, cops said.
Heartbreaking video captured the teen running from an attacker before the deadly shooting.
He died at St. Barnabas Hospital.
