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Greenville Police Interim Chief Ted Sauls, Lt. Michael Montanye, Pitt County Schools Superintendent Dr. Ethan Lenker and Karen Harrington, PCS director of student services, from left, address the public during a meeting of the Greenville Police Community Relations Committee at Greenville City Hall Tuesday evening.
Greenville Police Interim Chief Ted Sauls, Lt. Michael Montanye, Pitt County Schools Superintendent Dr. Ethan Lenker and Karen Harrington, PCS director of student services, from left, address the public during a meeting of the Greenville Police Community Relations Committee at Greenville City Hall Tuesday evening.
The superintendent of Pitt County Schools said the district is considering using metal detectors intermittently to upgrade school safety by the end of the school year.
At a presentation by the Police Community Relations Committee Tuesday evening, Superintendent Ethan Lenker said that there have been conversations among schools about randomly rotating metal detectors like the ones used at sporting events at school entry points.
“We do have metal detectors at the school ... for games and things like that,” Lenker said. “There is a real concern you would not be able to get kids in school because they show up at the same time. Our policy, and this is a conversation lots of principals are looking at, would allow us to ... randomly pick either a doorway, an entrance to the school, a bus, a parent drop off. Wherever kids may be. Those are things I think will start happening this year.”
Lenker added that the district does not have enough personnel to run metal detectors efficiently at this time. “That part would be a challenge but we are looking at a way to use metal detectors in a way that is visual,” Lenker said.
The district’s policy on student searches already permits metal detectors to be used in entryways.
Visible security measures were a matter of discussion at the meeting which featured a panel of Lenker, Greenville Police Interim Chief Ted Sauls, GPD Lt. Michael Montanye and Karen Harrington, PCS director of student services. Montanye is an administrator for school resource officers, which this school year are at every school in the district for the first time.
Montanye said that having a visible presence like SROs, or metal detectors, is a good way of mitigating violence in schools.
“We want high visibility with marked cars, with police officers in uniform, with everything at our schools so when somebody who’s thinking of doing something bad at school sees that uniformed officer or sees that marked car, they know there’s someone there and they say not today “ Montanye said.
Montanye’s response came from a question by Kimberly Carney, a Greenville resident, who mentioned that she recalled days when officers were placed in schools undercover. Carney was one of many locals who came out to watch the presentation and question what schools are doing to keep kids safe amid a climate of mass shootings like the one in Uvalde, Texas, which saw 19 murdered by a gunman.
The community member who asked about metal detectors also mentioned recent events in North Carolina where guns were not involved, like the August stabbing death of a student at Northside High School in Jacksonville. Sauls following the presentation said that it is good to get community feedback like the one offered on metal detectors.
“It’s something that we see a lot in society now,” Sauls said. “One might say, well, can we put a premium on a life? Can we put a price tag on it? But we have to work within the realm we have, we have to work within our physical environment.
“There were questions asked about how the kids were impacted and I thought those questions were extremely important being the father of two girls. How does what they see me doing on a daily basis impact their life? Moreover what they see on social media, on the news, what they hear at the school or what they experience at the school.”
Harrington was onboard to address the latter. She said it is important that kids do not see everything on television for the sake of their mental health and that she does not let her own sons have a phone at school. She said that parents contacting their kids on a cellphone during lockdowns could make noise that alerts an intruder or tie up public safety communications.
Harrington said that programs like Pride in North Carolina offer parents insight on mental health awareness, stress management and how to tell if kids are bullied or abusing drugs. She said it is important for parents to communicate with staff and their kids.
Sauls also emphasized that while GPD aims for transparency the department does not advertise all the tools they use. He assured the public that GPD is equipped and ready for any emergency.
“Your police department is extremely well equipped to deal with anything we might face, and I do mean anything. Rest assured we will be willing to respond.”
That included a shooting Tuesday afternoon on Concord Drive which prompted a lockdown at J.H. Rose High School. Sauls said the shooter never set foot on the campus and that the school was locked down for 10-15 minutes as officers investigated. An arrest was made in the incident.
Contact Pat Gruner at pgruner@reflector.com and 329-9566.
David Moore has spent the summer taking steps similar to what police chiefs, superintendents and others on school security frontlines across the country have been doing in response to mass shootings that have rattled communities, large and small, across the country.
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