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Liberty schools look to deter crises with security system
By Sarah Lehr
LIBERTY
If an active shooter enters a school, the last thing a police officer wants to do is waste precious minutes running down the wrong hallway, Liberty Police Chief Richard Tisone says.
Officials say a security system implemented by Liberty Local Schools will enable police officers to respond more quickly to a crisis on campus.
The system includes two-way dispatch communication with the Liberty Police Department and 60 cameras placed throughout E.J. Blott Elementary School, W.S. Guy Middle School and Liberty High School. The district does not employ a school resource officer.
The district has spent $30,000 on the cameras and $8,250, including $7,000 from an Ohio Attorney General’s Office grant, on radios.
Liberty Local Schools Superintendent Stan Watson can view all the live camera feeds from a 42-inch screen in his office. School administrators and Liberty police officers also can view the feeds from computers or smartphones.
Several school administrators carry portable radios, which allow them to communicate with Liberty police. Effectively, this system transforms the schools into “mini-dispatch centers,” Tisone said. Administrators use plain-speak rather than police signals when speaking over dispatch for ease of communication.
Watson said a key element of the security system is simplicity. The Ohio Department of Education requires districts to submit detailed security plans, but Watson noted that leafing through a 50-page response plan would prove difficult under the time pressure of an emergency.
To streamline response times, Liberty staff members use a color-coded map of the campus to dispatch officers to a specific location.
“From a tactical standpoint, I can’t tell you the amount of stress that would relieve for an officer,” Tisone said. “You’re basically hunting the person that is inside the school.”
The Columbine High School massacre of 1999 provoked a change in the way police respond to an active shooter, Tisone said.
Previously, law enforcement favored a more cautious “contain-and-wait” approach, which involved forming a perimeter and waiting for a more-specialized police unit to arrive. Now, active-shooter training teaches officers that the first cops on the scene should take action immediately to stop the shooter.
“The faster you respond to the threat, that individual is either going to be shot, or commit suicide, or it’s going to end,” Tisone said.
Watson said potential shooters are likely to be familiar with school buildings.
“Access and who comes into the building is, in my opinion, far secondary to being able to respond quickly,” Watson said.
A 2014 study by the Federal Bureau of Investigation identified 160 “active-shooter incidents” in the United States between 2000 and 2013. Thirty-nine of those incidents occurred at schools or other educational environments. In the majority of incidents at middle schools and high schools, the shooter was a student.
Going forward, the district plans to install more cameras. Watson said the video surveillance does not present privacy issues for students or staff.
“They’re all in common areas; there aren’t any in any places where you would expect privacy,” Watson said. “Unless you are in a bathroom, there’s a pretty good chance you are on camera.”