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After the tragic shootings at Sandy Hook Elementary School, which the department took as a “wake-up call,” Fairfield police have made school safety a top priority.
Officer Lance Newkirchen said scenarios involving school safety have been incorporated into the department’s regular training programs and exercises.
The town's schools have received security assessments and teachers have undergone two-and-a-half hours of security training, Lt. James Perez added.
Though officers were well-prepared for the Friday incident, the department responded with more officers and resources than a response to a typical school safety call.
“The majority of the time we can focus on one school,” Newkirchen said of a typical police response.
Most of the time, officers are dispatched to only one building for a school-related safety incident at a time, Newkirchen said. A caller may be report a suspicious person near one school building, for example, he said.
But Friday’s unprecedented districtwide school lockdown of all 10,000 students was prompted by the mention of three schools in the caller’s threats, police said.
Perez said he hasn’t seen such a powerful police response to any other school-related incident in the department’s history.
"We have never had an incident in the schools of this magnitude," Perez told the Daily Voice Friday afternoon. It was a "monumental" task to clear and secure the 17 public school buildings, he said.
Officers were also dispatched to private schools in town, although the calls were not directed toward them, police said.
Newkirchen said the town did an "exemplary job” in its response.
"Having to cover 25+ [public and private] schools is unheard of," he said.
Officers from neighboring departments — as well as other agencies — responded to help at the schools, according to police.
Friday’s incident began with the fake 911 calls, believed to have been the result of “swatting”, when someone calls in a false report to police about criminal activity.
Perez said officers were sent to what turned out to be a fictitious address on Black Rock Turnpike where an individual said he had killed a girlfriend and was holding hostages.
Police then received more calls, reporting pipe bombs at a couple of school buildings and a machine gun at another.
The calls are still under investigation, police said Monday.
Newkirchen asks the public to remain patient as police work to determine the identity of the caller.
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