New London School District adding police radios for safety

NEW LONDON - One area school district is taking steps to try to better protect its students.

It involves making police officers more visible and providing better communication between the schools and police.

When it comes to school safety, minutes matter. A lesson learned from the Newtown, Connecticut shootings last month said New London Assistant Police Chief Jay Zempel.

"We are trying to cut down on the response time or maybe even eliminate the dispatch portion of the response time by putting these radios in the schools."

Zempel says the New London Police Department and school district are also hoping the radios will provide important details quicker.

"We will get real-time information coming from the schools and they can literally go direct, or our squads can go direct with them as to locations, how many, what type of incident is taking place."

The collaboration kicked off this week with the launching of a fundraising website. The goal is to raise $5,000 to put at least one police radio in each of the six public and two private schools in the area.

"For the most part, all of our schools are safe, but in that one incident that happens very rarely, you want to be prepared as best you can," said New London School district administrator Bill Fitzpatrick.

Starting Wednesday officers will also do daily walkthroughs of all district schools. Zempel says in addition to added security the walkthroughs will help familiarize officers with the layout of each school in case of an emergency.

"It's one thing about the officers getting to the school but if the officers have never been in the school and say the information says the active shooter is in the gymnasium and the officer doesn't know where the gymnasium is, it really doesn't help them."

Fitzpatrick these new measures could make a life-changing difference.

"If we can save even one child, I am sure that would be the goal of every school."

New London Middle School and New London High School will have radios installed by the end of the week. Zempel says he hopes enough money can be raised to have the radios in the other schools in the next few months.