Enhanced Communication Sought to Better Protect Schools
With school threats becoming more frequent, the Westchester County District Attorney’s office met with more than two dozen police officers and school resource officers last week to enhance communication that will better protect school communities.
During the first-ever School Resource Officer Summit, held at the Westchester Intelligence Center (WIC) in White Plains, officers from more than a dozen police departments partnered with county officials to help combat threats on social media and discuss other safety concerns.
District Attorney Anthony Scarpino said the goal of the summit was to form a centralized network of information sharing that connects the more than 40 school districts and law enforcement agencies within the county. School safety is at the top of our agenda now, he said.
“These are very difficult times for school districts,” Scarpino said at the Aug. 2 conference. “It is at the top of the county executive and the district attorney’s agenda because we feel it’s important that our students feel safe when they go to school as much as humanly possible.”
Andrew Ludlum, acting executive director of the WIC, said creating an information sharing grid is essential to ensuring that anyone who is responsible for school safety receives the same training in a tight and effective communications network.
“What we do here is to steer to the network information and intelligence which will help them do their jobs better and that can touch on social media threats, actual threats of violence, and our goal here is to be primarily engaged in the prevention stage,” Ludlum said.
Along with social media threats, the county’s intelligence staff also tracks signs of bullying, internet threats, social media issues, hate crimes, and triggers that indicate a student in crisis.
Scarpino added that school resource officers are a valuable link to providing information and developing trust within their districts to combat potential threats.
“There is no silver bullet to this problem, but you are one of the bullets that we use,” Scarpino told officers. “We know if we work together that the benefits will be significant to all of us.”
Larchmont Det. Lisa Pompilio, a school resource officer for the Mamaroneck School District, agreed that resource officers have become an asset to the students, parents, and school and law enforcement officials. She said information sharing is vital to bridging the gap between the school districts and police department.
“Now as SRO’s come into play more often, it’s nice to have a group of people where we can reach out to, make some phone calls to, run things across,” Pompilio said.
While officials plan to meet with law enforcement four or five times a year, Scarpino said his office is also developing a school safety commission. The group will consist of law enforcement, school administrators, PTA members and mental health professionals to develop best practices in security.
“We’re trying to attack this from as many fronts as we possibly can and try to do the best we can,” Scarpino said. “Our main responsibility is to ensure that Westchester is the safest community that we can make it and the healthiest community we can make it and maintain that.”
