Suffolk officials on school safety: A scenario like Uvalde won't happen here

Suffolk County officials on Friday said a scenario like the Uvalde, Texas, school shooting, in which officers waited 75 minutes in hallways before confronting the gunman, would not happen here because local police would move in far more quickly.

“I guarantee we will not be waiting 75 minutes,” Suffolk County Police Commissioner Rodney Harrison said at a news conference about school safety held at police headquarters in Yaphank.

Suffolk County Executive Steve Bellone made the same pledge, saying, “that would not happen” in schools here.

The officials said Suffolk police have a policy to confront gunmen as quickly as possible, and that minutes and even seconds can mean the difference between life and death.

Nineteen children and two adults were killed at Robb Elementary School in Texas on May 24 in one of the deadliest school shootings in the nation's history. Nearly 400 law enforcement officers descended on the school but waited more than an hour to go into the classroom where the gunman was shooting students and teachers — even though some students were pleading on cellphones to police to come help them.

The massacre and police response are under investigation by various government agencies.

Bellone and Harrison outlined steps police are taking to keep schools safe as the new academic year begins. They include increased active-shooter drills and a system that allows police immediate access to a school’s camera system to aid them in the event of an attack.

“We are not in Suffolk County … sitting idly by waiting for some disaster to strike,” Bellone said. “We have been and will continue to be proactive when it comes to public safety and school safety in particular.”

Suffolk County Legis. Jason Richberg (D-West Babylon) said the school safety issue has hit home for him personally. He described a harrowing discussion with his wife about whether they should send their two sons to pre-K this year with bulletproof backpacks.

“We’ve never had this type of a conversation when it had to do with our children,” he said. They could not reach a decision, he said, because "we were both too emotionally stuck."

A spokesman for Nassau County Executive Bruce Blakeman said officials there will announce their school safety plans next week.

Bellone said Suffolk is ramping up programs that will enable law enforcement to react quickly and effectively to the nightmare scenario of a shooter in a school.

One program, called RAVE, is a panic button app that allows districts to alert law enforcement immediately during an emergency. Some 53 school districts in Suffolk, along with Eastern and Western Suffolk BOCES, have signed up for the program, which is free, he said. So have 19 private schools.

Another initiative, called SHARE, gives police direct access to a school’s closed circuit camera system in the event of an active shooter. This would allow police to pinpoint immediately where the shooter is and move to confront him or her, Bellone said.

“The police department now has eyes when these are set up in the school” showing “exactly where to go,” he said.

About 30 districts have signed up for SHARE, and Bellone and Harrison urged others to do so as well.

The county also plans to double the number of active shooter drills it conducts in school districts this year. It recently did ones at West Islip High School and Greenport High School, officials said.

Last year, the department handled several active shooter "threats" aimed at schools, with two of them deemed "credible" and leading to arrests before the perpetrators could take action, Harrison said.

“Unfortunately because of the climate that we are in, there’s a concern," he said. "Parents are worried about the safety of the child when they put them on that bus. I’m here to reassure the residents of Suffolk County that we want to protect your children."

The department has 13 resource officers stationed in schools in the county, but wants to at least double that number this year, he said. The county also recently hired an additional 48 school crossing guards, who will be placed in communities where there is a shortage of them, he said.

James Polansky, president of the Suffolk County School Superintendents Association, said violence in schools has become an overriding issue for administrators.

“The first thing I think about when I wake up in the morning and the last thing I think about before I turn in for the night is school safety," he said.