Secaucus Already Mapped Out School Maps, In Event Of A Shooter

SECAUCUS, NJ — On Tuesday, Gov. Phil Murphy announced that New Jersey will collect and digitize school building maps across the state. These school maps will be made available to local and State Police in the event of a school shooting or other emergency.

Except here in Secaucus, that's already been done: The Secaucus Police Dept. already has a digital blueprint of all the town's schools, and demo'd the maps during the active shooter drill held at the high school in November.

Secaucus Police Chief Dennis Miller confirmed that Secaucus Police have already mapped out blueprints of the local school buildings.

Using a tracking app called CRG Plans, Secaucus Police could track each officers' location in the school in real time. Once officers turned on GPS tracking on their department-issued phones, incident command could seem them all in real time, identified as a blue dot and their badge number moving through the school.

Secaucus was the first town in Hudson County to use Homeland Security funds to purchase the app, called Collaborative Response Graphics, or CRG.

On Tuesday, Gov. Murphy said CRG has mapped out approximately 1,500 of the state’s 3,000 public and private schools. The governor now said he will direct $6.5 million in American Rescue Plan funds to map out the remaining 1,500 schools in the state. Murphy announced the initiative from East Brook Middle School in Paramus on Tuesday.

In total, the state of New Jersey received $10.2 billion from the American Rescue Plan, the pandemic relief package that no Republican in Congress voted for.

According to Murphy, NJ State Police and the New Jersey Office of Homeland Security will conduct annual walk-throughs of all 3,000 school buildings to ensure the mapping data is accurate and up to date.

"What we learned after active shooter incidents is that the floor plans of these schools were often unreadable, if they were even accessible," the software's creator, former U.S. Marine Alex Carney, told Patch back in November, while the drill was underway at the high school. "A high school is a tactical nightmare to manage in a big incident. There are so many places for a shooter to hide and the responding officers don't know exactly where they are going, especially if they haven't been in the building many times."

Prior: Photos From Secaucus Police Active Shooter Drill At High School (Nov. 5, 2021)