Is it time for a dedicated Nassau PD school resource program?

We have seen it over and over on our TVs another school shooting. Nothing rips at the heart of a parent more than to see these events unfold. Just recently a terrorist camp in New Mexico was training children to carry out school shootings. This should remind us that there are threats to our schools beyond students as Islamic terrorists continue to seek soft targets. Mental health, reporting systems and social intervention is needed and will stop some of the threats, but not all. We need an all of the above approach to school safety. The last line of defense in an active shooter event is a trained, armed law enforcement officer to stop the threat. I’ve written a blog in the past, Is it time to arm retired cops in our schools. Many schools recognize this threat and are contracting security companies that hire armed retired police officers. While I agree with this approach, should this burden fall on our school districts alone? Should the County and State do more? I say they have an obligation!

There is a common sense legislative solution that I believe many of us can get behind. Nassau County currently does not have the resources to assign 400 County police officers to each school in the county. Maybe a real concept here is to dedicate 56 Nassau County police officers, one per school district, in a dedicated school division. The NCPD school division can host active shooter drills and even conduct training. This is a real first step towards school security. How can the county pay for this school division?

A Senator from Brooklyn was pushing legislation in Albany last legislative session for a program to allow NYC to place a police officer in each school. Schools could opt in or out of the program. Schools that participate would have speed cameras installed in front of schools to offset the cost of the police officers. It’s an Interesting concept and a real blueprint for Nassau County to follow. Like in the Senators bill, schools can opt in and out of the school resource program. Those that opt in have to install speed cameras to pay for the cost. It’s simple, each school board can opt in and get a full time police officer for installing a speed camera. You want to opt out no more speed camera, no police officer. Not only will the speed cameras offset the cost of the police officer, it will provide a more safe environment from speeding vehicles. This allows districts, local control. Let’s start this program and see what revenues the speed cameras produce. Revenues may allow for expansion. Maybe it expands to one officer per 1000 students, 500 students? This allows the County to provide police officers as full time School Resource Officers (SRO’s) without cutting into the County’s budget and takes some of the financial burden away from our schools as they face increasing security costs.

To accomplish this we need our state officials to renew the speed cameras during the next legislative session. At the County level, we need to make certain these speed cameras are used for the specific purpose of funding a Nassau County Police School Resource Program. We need our County Officials, State Officials and School Boards to get behind this concept. Change starts with us! Contact your County and State representatives to get behind this plan.

We need to all come together to institute a real policy where trained law enforcement officers are on our schools campuses as a last line of defense to protect our children.

This is one idea and there are other options.

Another option for school security I will blog about in the future is what the state of NJ did. NJ established a class 3 Police Officer. Retired cops hired part time as police officers in our schools trained and managed by local law enforcement. This would need significant changes in Albany.

I will go into further details at a later date.

For those that are interested in helping push legislation and advocating for Nassau County School Resource Officers, trained and certified by the Police department, please join the Facebook group Secure our schools Nassau County.

Together we can institute change.

https://www.facebook.com/group...

This is my opinion and not the opinion of any civic association board I belong to.