Officials in Springfield are looking to update a contract that lets police access cameras in Springfield Public Schools in certain situations. Some students who say they’re uncomfortable with that voiced their concerns during a special community meeting Thursday.
The public, along with members of the Springfield School Committee and police department, gathered at the DeBerry-Swan School to discuss a 2021 agreement that established how and when Springfield Police can access interior and exterior cameras at local schools.
17-year-old Davian Pagan, a student at Springfield Honors Academy and teen organizer with the Pioneer Valley Project, was one of a dozen speakers as teens and parents spoke out on the matter.
“We are here today to talk about a policy that is rooted in a lack of transparency, a lack of trust and a lack of accountability,” Pagan said.
The school committee has been in the process of revisiting the contract, which member LaTonia Monroe Naylor says was originally passed with little public input and faster than she and others would have liked.
“It was agreed upon in a subcommittee meeting and the committee meeting, I believe, was two days before the full meeting, and then when we have the full meeting, they voted on it, and, even though we had a lot of questions, they still voted, [the] majority won, and it went through,” she recounted. “So, we did not get a chance to really speak to the community or get their input as to why this would or wouldn't be something that was good for our community.”
Naylor, now the chair of the Legislative & Contracts subcommittee, tells WAMC that getting the public’s input is a priority, hence the community meeting and another scheduled for December 12 at Brightwood-Lincoln.
Under the current agreement, police can access SPS exterior cameras at any time, whether it be live or stored recordings, provided the access is “needed for a bona fide law enforcement purpose, police investigative or criminal investigative purpose.”
More conditions apply to accessing interior cameras.
In most cases, such as “non-emergency” investigations, police need “prior written approval” from the SPS Safety and Security Office for access.
However, in a “public safety emergency situation,” such as an active shooter case, Springfield PD’s Video Analyst team and civilian Real Time Crime Analysis staff can access feeds, with the department required to notify SPS as soon as possible.
Speaking to concerns of police possibly accessing interior feeds outside of emergencies and investigations, Police Superintendent Larry Akers says there aren’t circumstances where police are watching feeds for the sake of watching them.
“We don’t know what you do, we don't know when you go to class - we don't care about any of that, unless someone is in there attempting to hurt some of you, that's when we come into play,” he said. “That's it. So, we watch cameras when there's a life-threatening event going on - that's when we want to watch the cameras. We don’t care what you do any time else during the day.”
According to a meeting handout from Springfield Public Schools, interior cameras have been accessed a total of eight times since 2021 – with seven cases stemming from prank swatting calls.
One case last month involved department officials checking cameras at the Springfield Public Day Elementary School after receiving a call about an active shooter. Looking over the cameras, authorities determined there was no shooting, and upon investigation, confirmed a student had taken a staff member’s phone and made the false claim.
The only apparent “real time use,” SPS says, occurred in March 2024, when a gun went off inside the city’s High School of Science and Technology.
The case involved an armed suspect entering Sci Tech and assaulting a student before fleeing. SPS Director of Safety and Security Adam Fenn says police accessing the school’s cameras allowed for quick confirmation of the suspect’s whereabouts.
“That call went out as a shooting in the school. They immediately accessed those cameras and saw that the perpetrator [had] left the building and [was] not in the building,” Fenn said to the attendees. “If we did not know that, we would have had a potential active shooter on our hands. That was not an active shooter, that was an assault.”
Fenn and SPS say districts across Massachusetts have similar agreements, including Worcester, Brockton and New Bedford.
For students like Pagan, though, the level of access allowed to Springfield police remains a concern. He cited incidents such as a 2019 assault case involving an officer grabbing a student by the neck at Commerce High School as reason for general distrust between police and the student body.
Ultimately, he says, he wants to see more checks and balances.
“When we talk about interior cameras, there's issues of privacy, there's extra steps that need to be taken that aren't taken with this policy,” he told WAMC. “Because to me, it's giving the police - even though it's live access - it's full blank without a check.”
School officials say feeds can only be accessed by authorized Real Time Crime Analysis civilian staff via username and password – with details of when and which cameras were accessed being recorded.
The analyst staff can also only view the images in real time, with SPS claiming there is no recording capacity.
Monroe-Naylor tells WAMC that as it stands, the three-page MoU is in need of clearer language.
After delaying a vote slated for the summer so the district could onboard its new superintendent Dr. Sonia Dinnall, Naylor says talks were extended in order to engage with the public further.
“Around the end of January, we have to vote on this again, and by then, we'll have our new firm that is going to be engaged, to help us make sure the language is accurately reflecting what the community is asking for and very clear on what it is,” she said. “We felt that the current policy in place does not clarify that it's for emergency situations, that it does not clarify that it is not police surveillance, and we want to make sure that those things are clarified."
