School Video Feeds Now Shared With Police and Fire

Smile, New Haven students, you’re on camera.

And now that camera’s video feed will be accessible to city police, firefighters, and other emergency responders all at the same time in the case of a school lockdown.

That update to the school system’s 3,000-plus security camera feeds, which any city emergency responder can now access in the case of a public safety incident at a city school, is one of the major public safety updates to come out of a school security task force that has been looking into the strengths and vulnerabilities of the New Haven Public School (NHPS) system’s emergency response. The task force was set up in the wake of February’s school shooting in Parkland, Fla.

During a Tuesday morning press conference at the city’s Fire Training Academy at 230 Ella T. Grasso Blvd., Mayor Toni Harp joined Superintendent Carol Birks, schools Chief Operating Officer (COO) Will Clark, Emergency Operations Director Rick Fontana, Police Chief Anthony Campbell, and Fire Chief John Alston, Jr. to talk about the changes to the school system’s safety protocols and technology in anticipation of the first day of school next Thursday, Aug. 30.

Many of the school security updates discussed on Thursday were presented to a joint meeting of the Education and Public Safety aldermanic committee in April. 

Birks and Clark said that the various school safety stakeholders participated in a ​“table top” at the Fire Training Academy on Tuesday morning, during which they sat around a table and talked through how to respond to various public safety incidents according to the new security protocols.

“There’s perhaps no greater responsibility we have as a city than the obligation to safeguard the children of our city residents who entrust them to the city school system every morning,” Harp said. ​“Today’s comprehensive review and exercises will help us meet that responsibility, again with a profound hope that all this preparation is forever and completely unnecessary.”

Clark said that the biggest change to the school system’s security features is the centralization of the video feeds from all 3,000-plus school security cameras onto one platform, called Milestone, which is accessible to city police, firefighters, school administrators, and other emergency responders.

He said that a three-phase $6 million state grant called Be Safer has allowed the school system to upgrade its school security cameras to higher-quality feeds, and also to connect the video streams to this centralized platform that can be accessed by Virtual Private Network (VPN) by any stakeholders with the appropriate credentials.

He said the updated cameras and camera feeds are currently in place at over 30 schools, and that the rest will received the updated technology over the next few months.

“They’re all basically mini computers,” Clark said about the cameras. ​“We can grant access, dent access, give it, cut it off, etc… It really allows for greater control. And because it’s on the same platform as the city’s, it allows for a greater commonality of use.”

He said that now, if a school goes on lockdown because of an active shooter incident or some other violent intruder incident, the video feeds from the school’s security cameras will be available for live stream by police, firefighters, and other emergency personnel.

He said the cameras are flexible, so that administrators can move them to different locations around a school depending on the need.

Cambell and Clark said that the schools have also updated school access key cards so that if a school goes into lockdown, all police officers and firefighters will still be able to access the building.

Clark said that a few of the newer schools, like the Engineering and Science University Magnet School (ESUMS) and the Dr. Reginald Mayo Early Childhood School, have access-card enabled doors throughout the entire building. Most schools, he said, only have access-card enabled street-level entrances and exits.

Furthermore, Campbell said, two police units will now be dispatched along with city firefighters whenever a school fire alarm is pulled. He said school shooters throughout the country have taken to pulling fire alarms as a means of getting students and teachers out of their classrooms before beginning an attack.

“There were 78 school shootings last year,” Alston said about the country more broadly. ​“Not all of them rose to the level of a Parkland or a Columbine, but they are lessons to let us know that we have the potential of having that here.”

He said the city’s new public safety technology and response protocols will ensure that, in case there ever is a school shooter incident in New Haven, the city’s emergency response teams will be prepared.

Click here for information on how to join the city’s Everbridge emergency notification system. Click on the Facebook Live video below to watch the full press conference.