School systems and police departments are community partners, and ensuring student, faculty and officer safety is a high priority for both entities. In Pennsylvania, police departments are being both innovative and proactive by using wireless technology to handle school safety. If there's an emergency, local police departments can increase situational awareness by directly linking to Pennsylvania schools' live video camera feeds.

About 128 cameras keep watch over the Franklin Regional School District's five schools — one high school, one middle school and three elementary schools. And the Murrysville Police Department will upgrade officers' in-car laptops with software that will connect to each of the district's live video feeds. Linking to these feeds could provide vital information for police officers in the event of an emergency.

"As with Columbine [High School] and things that have happened since then with universities and shootings," said Murrysville Police Chief Tom Seefeld of the impetus created by the grisly 1999 high school mass shooting and other high-profile student shootings, "we're trying to approach this in a manner that will provide the best safety for officers and firefighters, as well as students and faculty, if we should in fact have critical incidents at the school."

The police department received a $100,000 grant from the Community Oriented Policing Services technology program, of which about $45,000 will fund the purchase of OnSite Information Systems Inc.'s Responder Knowledge software.

Seefeld anticipates that the officer or firefighter in charge of an incident will use the video and floor plans to direct his or her subordinates about how to best approach a situation. "If we know of an area where something is occurring, we can punch that information in and bring that area up on the screen with the closest camera to that area," he said. "So we can relay to the responding officers or firefighters what we're seeing, which will greatly help them, I believe."

Go to Government Technology to learn more about the police/school video feeds.