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Photograph by Kathy De La Torre
Deputy Noah Brommeland (seated) and Sgt. Nick Perusina developed the School Site Survey Program to help the department respond to emergencies at schools in its jurisdiction.
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Program targets school emergencies
By REBECCA RAY
Santa Clara County Sheriff's Department officers now have all the information they need to respond to school emergencies, right at their fingertips.
Deputy Noah Brommeland and Sgt. Nick Perusina of the Westside Substation have developed a first-of-its-kind computer program that will help the department respond to school emergencies, and the School Site Survey Program is now up and running.
The program is stored in both hard copy in a binder and in electronic form on a disk, which deputies can upload to the laptops in their patrol vehicles. The program, which is easy to use and works on any browser, contains information on all 40 schools in the department's jurisdiction.
The information includes maps and photos of school grounds, including aerial photos taken by Stanford Life Flight Hospital and CalStar; administrators' names and phone numbers; locations of utilities; staging locations for paramedics, fire units and emergency operation centers; exit routes, the best ways to reroute traffic; and locations of doors and windows and which way they open.
At the beginning of each school year, the deputy who has a particular school on his or her beat will update the information on the school. Although the program will not provide for every possible scenario, it will provide a solid foundation of reliable information, Brommeland said.
Other law enforcement agencies have already recognized the program. On Sept. 13, representatives from the Attorney General's California Crime Prevention Officers Association presented the department with the Public Agency Program of the Year Award. Representatives from the CCPOA said they liked the program because the software was neat and because it made deputies become familiar with the schools on their beats--a byproduct the department didn't originally anticipate, Brommeland said, adding that school personnel will also get to know patrol deputies.
The program is not only a product, but a process where new professional relationships and better avenues of communication develop, Brommeland said.
On Sep. 21, Brommeland and Perusina presented the program at the Cops West Conference in Ontario, a two-day event that more than 1,500 law enforcement officers, including officers from other states, attended. Since the conference, 15 to 20 other law enforcement agencies have requested the CD. The department has also given a copy of the program to every law enforcement agency in the county.
"It's really a neat thing for the sheriff's office that our program is being replicated," Brommeland said.
Eventually, Perusina said, the program can also be used to prepare for emergencies not only in schools, but also in businesses, banks and city and office buildings.
Brommeland and Perusina have been working on the program since November 1999, in the wake of the Columbine, Colo., tragedy and other school emergencies around the country after Westside Substation commander Capt. Jeff Miles put them to the task of preparing the department for the worst. All too often, officers respond to incidents and threats with the minimum amount of information, Brommeland said, and the most important benefit of the program is that the department now has a reliable database of useful information about the schools it serves. Brommeland and Perusina designed the program to anticipate threats, identify the critical information and document the tactical response in crises.
Perusina, who came to the project with 25 years of experience in the department, is a member of the Sheriff's Emergency Response Team. Although Brommeland, who also belongs to the Sheriff's Emergency Response Team, has only been with the department for two years, he has brought computer skills to the project from his years of computer communications experience in the Air National Guard.
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