What can police and other criminal justice officials do to help school officials improve school security and crisis preparedness?  There are many practical and inexpensive, yet important, things that can be done.  These include:

1.   Establish regular communications between school administrators, police, probation officers, juvenile parole officers, social workers, judges, and other court and criminal justice officials to help identify current security and juvenile crime trends, operational concerns across agencies, and related issues.

2.   Train school administrators, teachers, and support staff on issues such as police and court procedures, distinguishing crimes from disciplinary problems, how to report incidents to police, legal and operational issues such as how to conduct student searches, and crisis preparedness protocol such as dealing with hostage situations, bombs and bomb threats, etc.

3.   Work with school officials to coordinate the creation and testing of crisis preparedness guidelines, bringing together of all emergency service providers (police, fire, medical, etc.), securing of school floor plans and building operational information needed by emergency service personnel in a crisis, and other related steps.

4.   Learn how schools operate.  It is a two-way street.  Police and criminal justice officials need to learn as much about schools as school officials need to learn about their operations.

5.  Work with educators to develop and deliver prevention and intervention programs for students.

Police and criminal justice staff need to remember that their areas of expertise and experience are new to most educators. Just as the most basic school and education issues are likely to be new to many police and criminal justice staff, so are police and criminal justice issues to educators. Be patient and willing to take the time to get everyone on the same page.