Buffalo, N.Y. (WBEN) - In light of Wednesday's fatal shooting during a scheduled school-wide Mass at the Church of the Annunciation in Minneapolis, Minn., there's once again a focus on school safety and security ahead of the upcoming academic year in Western New York.
With districts across the region returning to the classroom next week, local law enforcement and academic leaders are ready to ensure parents and families the safety and security at schools throughout the upcoming school year.
Erie County Sheriff's Lt. Jeremy Lehning says safety is something the department is constantly reviewing with every community it patrols.
"Our community engagement team is constantly out there engaging with the communities, speaking with community leaders, speaking with parish leaders. Speaking with pretty much anyone who will listen to the message," said Lehning on Thursday. "It's extremely important to keep open lines of communication for parents, for students, for teachers, for our administrators, for our patrol deputies. Everyone working in communities needs to work together in order to prevent something like this from happening. Open lines of communications are very, very important."
While authorities are still investigating the shooting in Minneapolis and gathering information leading up to it, Lehning says it's important for law enforcement across the nation to constantly evaluate these incident and try to learn as much as possible.
"We need to constantly be learning from every situation, because every situation in effect is different," he said. "It happens in different areas, different places, different times, different buildings, gatherings. It really, honestly, does not matter this. This type of an action does not discriminate. We definitely need to constantly evaluate what's going on and learn from the past."
With the gunman in Wednesday's shooting having fired on the church from outside and through through the stained glass windows, Lehning feels it's very important for everyone to remain vigilant, no matter the setting or situation.
"That's something where school security, SROs, the community itself, teachers, everyone needs to have a heightened and constant state of awareness, and be very cognizant of their surroundings. They need to pay very close attention to what's going on," Lehning said. "Anything out of the ordinary needs to be scrutinized. Everything needs to be taken into consideration. Nothing should be left off the table when it comes to something like this."
Whether it's at a public, private or parochial level of education, Lehning says the Erie County Sheriff's Office is in constant communication with students, parents and school administrators so they have a good influx of information with school safety and security.
"We have an active SRO program. We have an SRO in Alden, and we also have an SRO in Springville. Those SROs are very, very active in the schools. They're very active with the teachers and with the students. They conduct investigations, they do routine patrols throughout the schools. They're very familiar with the student base, they're very familiar with all the teachers. They're very familiar with schedules and what's going on," Lehning noted. "As a matter of fact, those school schedules are disseminated to our patrol district deputies, so they're very aware of what's going on. Whether it'd be a homecoming dance, a homecoming game, a homecoming parade, anything like that will be coming up in the very near future as the football season takes hold. These are all situations that everyone needs to be well-aware of and well-versed in."
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Meanwhile, school administrators like Dr. Darren Brown-Hall, superintendent of Williamsville Central School District, takes pride in the level of the district's safety and security. He also emphasizes safety as one of the district's top priorities.
"A couple of years ago, our community approved funding to have a capital construction project that really focused on safety and security. We have heightened security at all of our buildings, we built vestibules so that when individuals are actually bugged into our buildings, they don't have direct access to our students. They are held in a holding location until we understand what their purpose is," said Dr. Brown-Hall in an interview with WBEN. "If it is just to drop off something for their child, they can do it there. They can leave, and we'll make sure their child gets whatever item they had to drop off, whether it'd be a musical instrument or a lunch. We want to make sure that anyone from the outside doesn't have access to our students."
One thing Brown-Hall is impressed with heading into this school year is students knowing when to report something they may have not seen in the school building before. He says they know well the phrase, "If you see something, say something."
"Our students know they are the ones that see everything. Our faculty, our teachers are always on top of it. They know that student safety is our No. 1 important goal in the district too, because when students feel safe and they're healthy, they can come to school ready to learn. And so our staff stays on top of it also," Brown-Hall said. "Our front office staff, who is our first line of defense, they're always watching just to make sure nothing's out of place. So just the proper training that we do with all of our teachers, our adults in the building is also very important."
Another gamechanger for school security at Williamsville Central Schools in the implementation of a Raptor Visitor Management System last year.
"Any persons coming into our buildings, they have to have government-issued ID, is put through our Raptor System to make sure that person is able to be around students in a school building. So these are enhancements that we're looking to make sure are in place, and consistently implement it in every one of our school buildings," Brown-Hall noted.
Another security investment the district has made recently is to implement ZeroEyes.
"If there's anyone approaching any of our school buildings with any type of weapon that is visible, there's an emergency call that is made to local law enforcement, and the video of that is sent also," Brown-Hall explained. "We're working with that company to make sure that that's something we have, and we do have it in all of our school buildings, but that's important. We know that seconds matter when we're in situations like that. So with our Raptor System, with our security enhancements, with partnering with ZeroEyes to make sure that's our second set of eyes so that anyone approaching our buildings brandishing a weapon, that is no seconds, no time wasted notifying the local authorities. Those are all things that we have in place to ensure the safety and security of our students."
One wrinkle into this upcoming school year that could generate concern is if another shooting or emergency takes place at a school, students will not have access to their phones due to the bell-to-bell ban taking place at districts across the state.
While there may be some pause from people on the upcoming cell phone ban in schools, Brown-Hall is not concerned, especially since the district has an established connection with agencies like the Amherst Police Department when emergencies take place.
"When law enforcement reported that so many seconds are wasted in emergency situations with students trying to access their cell phones and trying to call their parents, instead of listening to the adults that are in charge and the authorities so that they can get to safety quickly. I have no pause on not allowing the cell phones, because we want to make sure that students are focused on getting somewhere safe under the direction of the adult, the teacher in the room, as opposed to trying to get to their cell phone to call their parents," he said.
"We understand in Williamsville that we have, under our care during the school day, the most important person to them in the world, and we take that very seriously. So anytime we can enhance security, anything that we can do in Williamsville, we're always looking to do it. That's why with all the security enhancements, we also always stress to our students, 'If you see something, say something.' Our teachers are very vigilant, as our administrators and our adults in the building. But I want parents to know that we take this role very seriously, and we do all we can to keep their favorite person safe."