School districts in Arizona are giving police access to surveillance systems. Here's why

Two of Arizona's largest school districts have decided to give police access to their surveillance systems.

Peoria Unified and Mesa Unified school districts recently approved agreements to grant local police departments access to live school camera feeds during emergencies.

The districts say the partnerships will help police better respond to emergencies by allowing them to immediately locate threats, medical emergencies, large fights or active shooters.

They also say it will help police departments respond appropriately to false alerts or situations that have already been diffused.

"In the world we live in, where we never know what's around the corner," said Allen Moore, Mesa Unified School District's safety and security director. "We just wanted them to have the best tools available so that they can respond with the proper amount of officers and resources."

Moore said there have been instances at Mesa Unified schools where he thinks this agreement would have been helpful.

Last year, there was a prank call to 911 claiming there was a shooting at one of the high school's cafeterias, he said. Had the police had immediate access to the district's surveillance system, they would have known sooner to de-escalate, he said. In that instance, the police didn't find out it was a hoax until the district learned about the 911 call, checked its cameras and then relayed what they saw on the camera feed to police, he said.

Moore gave another example from a couple of years ago of a student who had a gun at one of the district's high schools. The school police officer was "chasing him around campus," he said. Had the Police Department had access to the district's cameras, they could have sent responding officers to his assistance with "a lot more accuracy."

Districts cameras network in police 'real-time crime centers'

The school districts are taking advantage of relatively new "real-time crime centers" in Glendale and Mesa. At the centers, the departments can access live feeds from private and public cameras across their cities.

The Glendale Real Time Crime Center, which opened in 2019, has six full-time staff members and access to nearly 1,900 cameras, some city-owned and some at private businesses, according to Colby Brandt, an assistant police chief with the Glendale Police Department. Brandt said the department is not "randomly surveilling" but instead needs a public safety reason to access them, like shoplifting at a convenience store, for example.

Peoria Unified, which has schools in both Peoria and Glendale, will be the first school district to enter into an agreement with the center, Brandt said.

"It can allow us to escalate and send additional resources if needed," Brandt said. "But it also can allow for us to de-escalate and reduce the amount of personnel that we're sending into the school," he said, noting that heavy police response can create panic.

In the case of an active shooter, Brandt said, the partnership would give the police department the ability to "not waste time" and to direct resources immediately to the threat.

The agreements come as schools nationwide have expanded their surveillance systems over the past decade.

Between 2009-10 and 2019-20, the percentage of public schools reporting they used security cameras increased from 61% to 91%, according to a 2022 report from the National Center for Education Statistics.

Mesa Unified, Arizona's largest school district by number of students, has approximately 3,000 camera views across the district, with cameras at each school. The district does have staff members who monitor cameras all day, but not enough to monitor 3,000 cameras accurately, Moore said.

There's one full-time camera monitor in Mesa Unified's safety and security department who primarily watches the district's elementary schools, which don't have police officers, while the middle school cameras are monitored by their front office staff. Each high school has between 150 and 175 cameras and a designated security guard who monitors its cameras.

Peoria Unified has 572 cameras but plans to have more than 1,600 at the start of next school year.

Neither of the districts has cameras in classrooms. In Mesa, cameras are in hallways, cafeterias, gymnasiums, auditoriums, courtyards and around the perimeter of buildings. Peoria has them in hallways and outside of school buildings.

What do the school district agreements with police say?

Mesa Unified's agreement with the city of Mesa specifies that the cameras will only be accessed during an emergency "occurring on or involving" one of its campuses.

The agreement defines "emergency" as an "active or ongoing situation in which articulable facts indicate that a significant threat to the health or safety of a student or other individuals exists."

According to the agreement, the cameras can only be accessed by authorized users, defined as city employees identified by the Mesa Police Department as "essential to providing an active or ongoing emergency response" and approved by the police chief to access the surveillance systems. The agreement was approved by the Mesa Unified governing board in December and by the Mesa City Council in January.

Peoria Unified's agreement with the Glendale Police Department states that the department "in its reasonable discretion, will access the cameras when it deems it necessary to do so, depending on the type of service call or proactive monitoring." It was approved by the district's governing board on Feb. 8 and by the Glendale City Council on Feb. 13.

Kevin Molino, Peoria Unified's acting superintendent, said the Glendale Police Department would only pull up a video feed for a 911 call, an officer request for assistance or a RAVE Mobile Safety alert, which he described as a "panic button alert system" that staff members can use.

Peoria's agreement also allows the Glendale Police Department to access older recordings "for investigative purposes." Brandt, the Glendale Police Department assistant police chief, gave the example of a school robbery that occurred overnight as one instance in which the department might access historical recordings.

Peoria Unified governing board member David Sandoval called the agreement an "invaluable layer as it relates to safety" during the Feb. 8 board meeting.

The Mesa and Peoria school district agreements with police may be the start of a broader trend across the Valley.

Brandt said he'd engaged in preliminary conversations about similar partnerships with almost every school district in Glendale. At a Feb. 21 Tempe Union High School District governing board meeting, Sean McDonald, the district's assistant superintendent for district operations, said Tempe Union is also considering a police partnership. McDonald invited board members to visit the Mesa Real Time Crime Center and told them that the Tempe Police Department is assembling its real-time operations center.

Reach the reporter at mparrish@arizonarepublic.com.

This article originally appeared on Arizona Republic: Arizona school districts giving police access to security cameras