When an active threat is taking place at a school, having police respond quickly and appropriately is vital for saving lives. For school board administrators and commanders at real time crime centers (RTCC), the mission is two-fold: Reduce the time it takes to get eyes on the scene, and boost situational awareness so responding officers can act decisively.
Unfortunately, bridging the gap between a school district’s CCTV system and a law enforcement agency’s RTCC is rarely a simple plug-and-play operation. Making this integration work requires navigating complex procurement processes, establishing policies that respect privacy and building a culture of mutual trust from the outset.
In Washington State, the Spokane County Sheriff’s Office (SCSO) and the Mead School District have worked together to reduce the time it takes for the SCSO’s RTCC to access school cameras. Quicker access means faster, more appropriate responses by law enforcement, and a better chance of foiling shooters as soon as possible. “School safety is very important to us,” said Brad Cushman, the RTCC technology manager for the Spokane County Sheriff’s Office. “We want to be prepared for any unfortunate event that may or may not happen.”
Maximizing success through cooperation
Cooperation between Mead School District (MSD), which serves roughly 10,400 students across 16 sites, and the SCSO is nothing new. The district had long employed School Resource Deputies (SRDs) provided by the Sheriff’s Office, and worked together in other ways to keep students and teachers safe.
As a result, when the MSD’s CCTV camera systems reached their end-of-life after a decade of use, the district’s managers wanted to ensure that their new cameras would be operationally compatible with first responders, along with new radios being purchased for buses and buildings. “So we reached out to the Sheriff’s Department and asked, ‘Since we’re replacing these things, what would be a seamless integration with your system in case there ever was an emergency?’” said Dr. Jared Hoadley, the MSD’s Assistant Superintendent of Operations. “We invited the Sheriff’s Department to help us select our software, too, to ensure compatibility. Our goal was to work together really closely, to create a system that would work well for both of us.”
For Michael Cannon, a Mead School District board director, this collaboration was fundamental to the project’s success. “Our shared goal was safety, that’s the objective,” Cannon said. “So working together with the Sheriff’s Department was a given, to attain the safety measures we were interested in, and making the most of them.”
Fast, intuitive camera access
In the past, the RTCC’s ability to access MSD cameras was slow and complicated. Doing so meant navigating web-based portals, logging in with credentials and clicking through lists of cameras named by school staff.
“The big issue we have is that we don’t log into a school district’s camera that often,” said Cushman. “As a result, we are relearning a school’s floor plan for the first time or second or third time, and we’re not really sure what ‘Camera One’ or ‘Camera Two’ are.”
To solve this problem, the SCSO RTCC and the district are moving toward a unified video platform. “This platform allows us to bring in all of the school district’s cameras and floor plans, and have them laid onto an online 3D map,” Cushman said.
With this kind of fast and intuitive access to the MSD’s cameras and floor plans, SCSO RTCC staff can quickly and confidently select camera feeds during a crisis. They can also provide responding officers with accurate, real-time information on what is happening inside the affected school.
“Right now, our average time to get just logged into the MSD’s camera system is anywhere from 45 seconds to 60 seconds,” said Cushman. “We’re going to cut that into anywhere from 20 to 30 seconds. We call this kind of speed ‘virtually being on scene before any deputy gets there.’”
Additionally, the platform allows the SCSO RTCC to locate deputies (via their body-worn cameras’ GPS data) in real time on the same map as the school’s CCTV feeds. The result is truly useful situational awareness that helps commanders make better and more effective decisions during an active shooter threat incident.
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Respecting student privacy
For school boards and superintendents, student privacy is paramount. As a result, giving police access to school cameras is a real issue, and one that can hamper cooperation between both parties.
The MSD and SCSO have addressed this issue through a clear Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) and a rigid audit trail. Furthermore, the SCSO RTCC’s access to the MSD’s cameras is not continuous surveillance: It is incident-driven.
“If there’s a triggering event of some sort where we believe that the Sheriff’s Office is going to be coordinating some sort of response, we have granted permission for them to access our cameras,” Dr. Hoadley said. “But we have not authorized continuous surveillance.”
Crucially, the MOU includes a mandatory notification provision. “Anytime we access their cameras, we have to send an email either before or afterward, depending on the event,” said Cushman. “We would send the email before if the cameras are accessed for training or technical support; afterward, if we were responding to an actual incident.”
This level of transparency is meant to build credibility with the school board and the community.
“There is a balance between providing safety and security, and using those tools in a way that acknowledges any concerns about privacy,” Cannon said. “As well, the school board gets to tour the RTCC’s facilities, look at the cameras and ask questions such as, how long is the data stored, and is it publicly accessible?”
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Training for the worst day
To ensure operational readiness, SCSO and the Mead School District have integrated the board’s CCTV camera systems into their active lockdown drills. This ensures that the system and the staff are ready to go should “the worst day” scenario ever occur.
“Anytime there’s a lockdown drill, we access their cameras and go through different exercises,” said Cushman.
These exercises mirror the workflow of the SCSO RTCC’s analysts. As a result, when an actual priority call comes in, the workflow is immediate.
“If it’s a priority one call, we access their cameras first and foremost,” Cushman said. “We don’t wait for the details. We get eyes on the scene as soon as we can.”
Once the SCSO RTCC analyst locates the threat and is informed of the issue, this intelligence is relayed to the officers on the ground. “We’re relaying, over the radio, what’s going on and what the situation is,” said Cushman. “We don’t want to show them any kind of video that may be distracting to them. We want to make sure their heads are in the right place.”
Lessons learned
For agencies looking to replicate Spokane County’s success, the team recommends putting relationships first, planning for long-term sustainability and implementing new systems in a scalable manner.
Dr. Hoadley emphasized that the technology is secondary to the human connection. “It’s really about building a trusting relationship,” he said. “Brad Cushman, and the other people at the Sheriff’s Office, we’re on a first-name basis. That relationship is important in any community, and in trying to get anything done.”
From the SCSO RTCC perspective, Cushman advises patience — and financial foresight. “We say, crawl, walk, run. Start slow and go from there,” he said. “Being able to maintain these projects and have the right people in place is the most important thing. So you have to start small and slowly to build it right.”
Long-term funding must also be addressed early, he added. School budgets often rely on levies that may pass one year and fail the next. To ensure continuity, the SCSO encourages districts to align contracts with the Sheriff’s Office’s 10-year vendor agreements and, when possible, pay upfront.
“We also tell them to pay for those 10-year contracts upfront,” Cushman said. “This means, no matter what happens, we’re going to have this system in place for a decade.”
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