Police Step Up Security at City Schools

On Monday morning Portsmouth Police platooned a police officer at Portsmouth High School and the Middle School and instructed other officers to pay close attention to the city's three elementary schools during their patrols.

Deputy Police Chief Corey MacDonald said Monday afternoon that these were the initial steps the police department was able to take within its current funding parameters in wake of the Connecticut school shootings that left 20 elementary school students and six adults dead.

"We are working with the School Department to do what they want us to do," said MacDonald.

But MacDonald said it will be up to the Portsmouth School Board, the City Council and city residents to decide if they want to pay for full-time school resource officers for all five city schools. "We are pushing for more SROs, but it is something where the city would have to decide what it wants," he said.

Portsmouth Police have been trying to restore the SROs positions they once had for the past three budget cycles, but have not been able to win enough public support to make it happen. Following the tragedy that took place in Connecticut, MacDonald is hopeful the community may be ready to have that conversation again.

MacDonald said it costs an average of $80,000 per year to fund one SRO, but he is convinced that if an SRO was stationed at the city's schools and an incident unfolded like the one that happened in Newtown, Conn., on Friday, a trained police officer would be able to protect the schoolchildren and staff and expedite the police response very quickly.

"If there is a shooter in the school, would it be helpful to have an officer in the school? The answer is yes," MacDonald said.

MacDonald said police officers do so many things to protect city residents and they should also be able to protect “our most precious commodity, our children.”

Given the severity of what happened in Connecticut and other mass shootings the nation has seen, MacDonald said the police response has changed from having a SWAT team form a perimeter around a building before going in to reacting to the gun shots.

Currently, MacDonald said Portsmouth has one SRO that splits their time between the Middle School and Portsmouth High School. On Monday morning, students were greeted by a Portsmouth Police officer at both schools.

Portsmouth Police officers on patrol also made it a point to stop and visit Little Harbour School, the Dondero School and New Franklin Schools if they are part of their regular patrols to just do brief walk throughs and make sure the students and staff are safe.