Unblinking eyes may watch school

Bennington Banner | August 25 2005

BENNINGTON -- Police Chief Richard B. Gauthier and local school leaders have applied for a $120,000 grant to bring surveillance cameras to Mount Anthony Union High School.

One of the primary goals of installing cameras throughout the school is to maintain student safety and security, said Police Lt. Paul J. Doucette Jr.

The technology, he said, would supplement the work of school resource officer William W. Tatro, who also works at the Mount Anthony Union Middle School, where there are currently about 20 video cameras.

"It is an outstanding tool," Doucette said of the cameras at the year-old middle school.

David Adams, the middle school principal, said students and their families are aware of the cameras. He said the technology works well for teachers and other staff who want to keep unruly student behavior in check within a 150,000-square-foot building.

"That's a lot of ground to cover and the cameras have been helpful in a number of areas," said Adams. "It gives everyone peace of mind. There's no invasion of privacy."

Adams said he couldn't disclose the location of all the cameras but said they are in common student "passing areas," such as entrances and exits, hallways, and the cafeteria.

It would be a great idea, he said, for the high school and adjoining Southwest Vermont Career Development Center to use similar technology.

But Bradley Myerson, a Manchester attorney and longtime member of the American Civil Liberties Union, said he finds video surveillance to be intrusive in public schools and unwarranted.

He said it sends the wrong message to students that school leaders don't trust them. Furthermore, he said, it conditions students to not object when they're being watched all the time.

"It basically tells students Big Brother's watching you and you'd better watch out," he said, referring to a character in George Orwell's "1984."

Myerson said the student shootings at Columbine High School in 2001 and Red Lake High School this spring were isolated incidents. They don't provide enough justification for other schools nationwide to consider installing video cameras, he said.

Earlier this month, the Brattleboro Police Department proposed installing recording video cameras in a downtown parking lot in an effort to reduce crime. The Associated Press said police leaders are expected to return to the Select Board next month with a more detailed plan.

Members of the Bennington Police Department had a chance last week to hear from the principal of Red Lake High School in Minnesota during an interactive television training session. Principal Chris Dunshee spoke about student safety and video cameras.

Dunshee said the school had several mechanisms in place to keep students safe and that cameras allowed school leaders to spot fights before they got out of hand. But he also said that if someone was bold enough to attempt a shooting or the kind of terrorist attacks that happened in New York and London, there's little anyone can do to prevent them.

The Mount Anthony schools have conducted so-called containment and second-stage evacuation drills since the Columbine incident.

Adams said a bomb scare at the high school about eight years ago made him and others keenly aware of the need to keep students and school staff members as safe as possible.

There are already plans to upgrade a cafeteria camera at the middle school and add an external camera on campus to prevent the kind of vandalism that occurred earlier this year when an unknown person or persons stole a fiberglass moose from school grounds.

High school Principal Sue Maguire and Wesley L. Knapp, superintendent of the Southwest Vermont Supervisory Union, could not be reached for comment on Wednesday.

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