Police Officers To Get Digital Maps Of Schools Officers To See Computerized Sneak Previews Of Crime Scenes

Police who are called to school emergencies soon may be able to review floor plans within moments of arriving.

Suspect in the science lab? Second floor, fourth door on the left. Need to cut the lights? Here’s the electrical panel.

Spokane County law enforcement officers say a plan to computerize detailed maps of schools - and possibly transfer them to computers in their cruisers - will give them the edge should they ever face a school disaster.

“It gives us all the crooks and crannies where suspects can hide, where they might put explosives,” said Spokane County Sheriff Mark Sterk.

A fledgling Spokane company called Digital Scanning and Imaging Inc. is scanning blueprints of Spokane County schools, public and private, elementary through high school, onto compact disks at no charge to police.

Both police and sheriff’s officials jumped at the offer but say the computer systems in their cars aren’t set up to handle the technology just yet. The sheriff’s office, for instance, doesn’t even have car computers.

And Spokane police cruisers have terminals with 5-inch screens, which would make reading a blueprint a real challenge.

For now, both police and sheriff’s officials are working toward a joint federal grant funneled through the state that would provide about $250,000 for an enhanced mobile computer system.

They aren’t sure when the systems would be upgraded, exactly what kind of equipment they’d purchase or even if the mobile computers could run compact disks, said police Lt. Scott Stephens. The terminals in cruisers now are largely used for handling calls and doing name and vehicle checks.

“We are looking at laptops as one option,” said Stephens, who is in charge of the department’s information analysis services.

Both agencies say that for now they’ll probably make the computerized blueprints available to just tactical teams, mobile command posts and supervisors who’d take charge at an emergency. “It will take some training for us,” Sterk said.

“Cops aren’t used to reading blueprints.”

Digital Scanning co-owner Jim Ellis said he and his partner, Ted Solomon, offered their services to police after watching live television reports of the mass shooting in Littleton, Colo. “They had the blueprints out there, blowing in the wind. The first couple of hours was lost.”

Most schools are readily supplying blueprints. Next, Digital Scanning will offer to create computerized blueprints for schools in Whitman, Lincoln, Adams, Pend Oreille, Ferry and Stevens counties, Ellis said.

“If there’s an emergency, in a matter of seconds police can know where everything is - the elevation of the school, where Room 34 is, and whether you can land a helicopter on the roof. They can find it in their own cop car. It’s state of the art.”

Police who arrive at schools after hours would find the maps especially helpful, because school administrators wouldn’t be there to direct them, said Jim Richardson, safety officer for the East Valley School District.

“It’s just going to be tremendous …compared to what we had, which was basically nothing,” Richardson said. “The police and fire department really didn’t know the inside of the buildings.”

Ellis said the scanning company offered to do the work for free to make schools safer for children. Some participating school districts, however, have gone on to purchase other services from the company, such as archiving outdated blueprints.

“We have got some business from this, but it was almost accidental,” Ellis said.

He hopes to have the computerized blueprints finished by the end of August, just in time for the start of school.

Emergency workers are also planning a school disaster drill for early fall to allow everyone to practice working together quickly and efficiently, said David Byrnes, deputy director of the City-County Department of Emergency Services.

Participants will include law enforcement agencies, fire crews, emergency medical teams, educators, bomb experts, hazardous materials workers and others from Spokane and surrounding counties who might respond to disasters.

“We’re trying to make this a pretty big deal,” said Byrnes, adding that the make-believe scenario will probably include a gunman and bomb.

Several schools have volunteered to participate, but a site hasn’t been chosen, Byrnes said. Officials also haven’t decide whether to include students in the drill.

“We have talked with Fairchild Air Force Base about using some of their people to be perpetrators so we wouldn’t have to use a child,” Byrnes said.

“Some administrators are saying they’d like to do it with kids present, and some are not,” Sterk said. “While we’d like to do it with kids present so it’d have a realistic flavor, it’s not necessary.”

Some school administrators are worried about frightening children unnecessarily, Sterk said. “They don’t want to scare the kids, and we want to be very sensitive to that ourselves.”