While the Uvalde, Texas tragedy is the most recent mass school shooting to stun, sadden, and anger the nation, town officials and police in North Haven have led an effort to protect students, teachers, and staff in all school buildings since the tragic Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting of 2012.

“During the time frame after 2012, after the Sandy Hook tragedy, we began to think very diligently about what we needed to do to increase our school security,” First Selectman Michael J. Freda told the Courier.

At the same time, said Freda, residents concerned about the state of security in the town’s schools reached out to the First Selectman’s Office. Freda noted that it took some time to examine the details of the incident at Sandy Hook and put a proper response plan together for North Haven—a natural result, Freda explained, of how some changes in government take time because of rules, regulations, and procedures that must be followed.

“But we were firmly committed to developing what is called a Public School Security Supernumerary Program,” he said.

After talking at length with leaders in the North Haven Police Department as well as town residents, Freda said the goal was “to enhance the protection, health, safety, and welfare of students, teachers, and faculty enrolled in our public schools here in North Haven.”

Freda explained that the supernumeraries in each of the public school facilities “are armed, certified police officers. And they are at the elementary schools—all four, one at each—and we also have a school resource officer [SRO] at the middle school and the high school.”

Approval for the installation of supernumerary officers in each of the town’s schools was adopted on June 25, 2018, at a special town meeting, although Freda also noted that among the overwhelming approval of the school safety program, a few voices spoke in opposition.

North Haven Police Department Captain Andrew Stavrides also spoke with the Courier and discussed the department’s support of the security measures put in place after Sandy Hook.

“The North Haven Police Department believes in and supports this SRO program,” Stavrides said. “From its inception, we have received an overwhelming amount of support from the community. Our SROs are certified police officers through the Police Officers Standards and Training Council, and they receive periodic training to maintain that certification, in addition to training specific to the role of an SRO. Their primary duty is the overall security of the building, and immediately addressing any unwanted individuals.”

“We know during acts of school violence, response time matters,” Stavrides also explained. “By having an SRO in each school, we essentially have an immediate response. In addition to that, it gives our dispatchers and officers on patrol immediate communication as far as what might be occurring at a school.

“With immediate response and early communication with an SRO on the scene positions the police department well in mitigating any threats,” Stavrides continued. “Our entire department, as well as our SROs, have been consistently trained to immediately respond [to and] engage [with] anything active, whether it be at a school, church, movie theater, etc. This has been done at a classroom level, but also through firearms training, simulation training, and role play. During these trainings, our officers and SROs practice engaging suspects, evacuating personnel, applying tourniquets, and communicating with dispatch under stress.”

More Being Done

“We view this as so important to not only maintain this program, but we are also adding another SRO to the high school, so there will be two there, during the school hours, because there are three floors there, it is a large building,” Freda said.

In addition to the certified police officers, the town also staffs the schools with security personnel at the high school.

“Their general duties are to be visible at all times,” Freda explained. “They monitor the morning and afternoon bus ramps and parent/guardian drop-off locations. They monitor all visitors to the schools. As an example, if I were to walk to an elementary school during the day I could not get into that school. I would have to announce myself on the video camera. Someone greets a visitor. Duties also include patrolling the exterior perimeter of the schools and patrolling the interior of the schools, as well as receiving, investigating, and documenting minor complaints.”

Additional Enhancements

“This school security program will not only continue under my administration, but I’ll be looking to enhance it,” Freda explained. “And as part of that enhancement, we have already invested $2 million more in school infrastructure security upgrades at each elementary school, and the high school, which was built in 2005.”

When the new middle school was constructed, “all protocols in terms of public school safety were already built into that middle school,” Freda explained. “The infrastructure that the $2 million purchased was in upgrades to help fortify all four elementary schools and the high school, to add an even higher level of safety to each school.”

In addition to that when the town built the new police headquarters, it spent an additional $4 million to update the town communication system. This, according to Freda, included a more robust communication system between the police department and the Board of Education, and the schools.

“That was done to help in the event of a breach,” Freda noted, “[and] to increase the response time to provide support for the armed officers in each school. On top of that, I’m a big supporter of investing in additional training for our police officers in terms of SWAT training, which includes response time to active shooters and includes a lot that has to do with [general] school safety.”

Looking to the Future

“The superintendent of schools and myself along with the Board of Education business manager, are analyzing additional ways in each school and how we can do more to protect our children, our teachers, and our faculty,” Freda said.

“This is a program that is very important to me personally and our police department, and to the vast majority of citizens here in North Haven,” Freda continued, and added, “This program was designed to be an ordinance. I will continue to support it; I will continue to examine ways to improve this program for as long as I am here.”

“We value this SRO program and understand that certain aspects of the program and its success can’t be measured or visualized in a chart or graph,” noted Stavrides.

“For all we know, a person could have thought of causing harm at one of our schools, and then thought twice after seeing an armed officer outside on the platform each day. That level of deterrence is difficult to measure but priceless in our view,” Stavrides said.

“In the general scheme of things, this program is a small price to pay to keep our schools safe and protect our children,” Stavrides said, adding, “We’re proud of it and thankful our town government and First Selectman Freda continue to support it.”

Freda said he has received calls from other school districts that don’t have the level of protection for students that North Haven has been managing for nearly five years as a leader in the region on school security.

“I get calls from other towns and cities that want to meet with me to see what we are doing,” Freda said. “What I’m finding from the other chief elected officials who are calling me, is that they don’t have this protection at the elementary school level that North Haven has.”

And Freda is fully willing to help those who call.

“We are in our fifth year of this program, and I’m personally very happy with it,” Freda concluded. “And I am very happy with the quality of certified police officers that we have in the school system.”