Tell us about the Wenatchee School District.
We are located in Chelan County, Washington. The school district covers 256 square miles. We have 7,000 students in the district, and a staff of 1,200. It is like a small city and it has the same problems as a regular community does. We have assaults, thefts, drugs, gang activity, tagging and graffiti, and damage to property.
What about your background and your department?
I direct safety and security operations for the school district. I have 16 years of experience in law enforcement, and over 35 years in security. I've been with the Wenatchee School District for eight years.
In our department, we have the Security Director, three School Security Officers, one District Truancy Officer, and two Police School Resource Officers.
What made you look into Guard1 Plus?
Before we started using Guard1 Plus, we didn’t have anything, and that was a problem. We had no accountability. I did some research and found there were two or three choices available. I called the people who used each system; TimeKeeping Systems had best reviews in terms of the durability of the unit and in terms of having the least problems.
I needed a system to track where and when our SSO’s checked different part of the facility so we could narrow down times when incidents occurred. At first our School Security Officers were a little apprehensive as to their value but now they like what they do for them.
What do you like about the PIPEs?
They’re big enough that you don’t lose them. People think that they’re Tasers, and we don’t tell them that they’re not. Because they’re built so strongly, we could use them if we had to as a defensive weapon like a Kubaton, which is a small, six-inch stick used in defensive tactics. I think it helps keep my officers safe.
How do you use the system?
We have four PIPEs in active use, with one backup. At the high school, there are more than 90 checkpoint locations, both indoors and outdoors. We have a contracted security service that does all of our building checks at night, and we have a total of 14 buildings in our school district; the contracted security service also uses The PIPE. They go around and tag each door. It lets me know that they’re actually going out to the buildings and doing what they’re supposed to be doing so I know we’re getting what we’re paying for.
We also have buttons in a local church parking lot where students hang out. We have permission from the church to check their lot for problems and they like the idea of having a tour station there. I have tour buttons in baseball dugouts, in catwalks over auditorium stages, and in places where no one is supposed to go. So, because of the tour buttons, our officers are everywhere.
What benefits have you seen from having the Guard1 Plus system?
Gang-related tagging is very common. We have two patrol officers who patrol the high school and if they can go into a rest room or other area and notice gang tagging, we can go back to the Guard1 Plus log and find when the officers were there last. That allows us to narrow it down to a time frame and then we go back to the surveillance video and see who was in the area. We’ve gotten a lot of people just by being able to narrow it down to a time. If we didn’t have that, then we’d have to sit and look at surveillance tapes for hours to try to find some time during the day when something happened. With Guard1 Plus, we can narrow down to within a half hour or 45 minutes.
In one instance, we had a parent cause an issue with regard to the timeframe of an incident, and we were able to use the records from The PIPE download to show exactly how many times we had been at this specific location and how we were able to narrow it down and then go back to the video tapes. The parents just couldn’t argue with that.
The system has also helped to ensure our contract security company is actually doing what they are being paid to do, and we can show school administrators what our security officers are doing. It shows accountability but it also shows responsibility on the school-district’s part because we make the effort and the officers do make these kinds of rounds and they’re always out looking and protecting our students and our schools and our buildings. With Guard1 Plus, we can show that officers are not sitting in office watching security cameras; they’re out walking around, and this helps us prove that.
Would you consider The PIPE to be as durable as advertised and why?
Yes I would. They have been dropped on more than one occasion and have never failed because of it. We’ve only had one unit fail and it was replaced quickly.
Would you recommend the system to others?
In Washington State we’re a leader in developing school security departments. We have people from the capital visit us two or three times a year to see how we’re doing things to help them develop laws and legislation that will govern school security officers statewide. I also teach state academy for SSOs, and TimeKeeping Systems is one of the things I recommend that they look into. We look for the best bang for the buck, and that’s one of the things I like about TimeKeeping. They’ve been around long enough, it’s a proven technology, and the equipment is proven. We could’ve chosen something less expensive but I don’t think it would have held up as well.
How could we change The PIPE to make it better?
I don’t know; it’s not broken, so don’t try and fix it!
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