West Irondequoit schools calling for police presence on campuses

Irondequoit, New York – In order to ensure the safety of their students, the West Irondequoit School District asked to have police on campus for the remainder of the school year.

This comes after conducting several threat assessments, and seeing an increase in incidents during dismissal.

“They had asked that we partner with them to have an officer assigned to the school district,” said Chief Alan Laird of the Irondequoit Police Department. “With our current staffing levels, the most consistent way to do that would be at an overtime basis for the officers to be there.”

According to town supervisor Rory Fitzpatrick, this decision has been talked about throughout the school year, as school officials and parents have come to him with concerns about keeping their children safe.

“They thought that the town could help out, specifically the police department,” said Fitzpatrick. “When you send your kids to school, you want them to be safe, and the concern is always there. But when there is specific events that happened at the schools, they want to make sure the police are there and helping out.”

According to Fitzpatrick and Chief Laird, the shootings in Uvalde and Buffalo, this added security is greatly needed.

“A lot of us are parents, we have kids that are school-aged,” said Chief Laird. “Obviously, we think about that quite a bit, and recent events always bring those concerns back to the forefront. The police department and the town of Irondequoit are going to partner with our school districts to do everything we can to keep the kids safe during the school day.”

This policy will be effective until the end of the school year, and added it’s too far out right now to see if this added police presence will continue into the next school year, Fitzpatrick said.