Albion police have increased presence at school district
Albion Police Chief Roland Nenni
ALBION – Since a mass shooting at a Florida school on Feb. 14, Albion police have an increased presence at the Albion school district, with multiple officers visiting the three school buildings.
Officers are building relationships with students, teachers and staff, said Roland Nenni, the Albion police chief.
He addressed the Board of Education on Monday. The Police Department and school administrators have a long history of communication and working together, Nenni said. Many other school districts and police departments around the country don’t have open lines of communication, he said.
“We have a great relationship here and it will continue to grow,” he told the BOE. “We talk and we communicate.”
Michael Bonnewell, the district superintendent, reiterated Nenni’s comments that the district and Police Department work closely together.
“I’m thankful for the great working relationship with the chief,” Bonnewell said.
The five school superintendents in Orleans County have been meeting about once every two months with local law enforcement leaders for about three years. The group recently met with an official from the FBI to discuss mistakes made in the Feb. 14 shooting at the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida. A gunman killed 17 people.
Nenni said law enforcement and school leaders learn from those incidents, and discuss how to better prevent a shooting and how to best respond if it ever happened locally.
Nenni is the commander of the SWAT team in Orleans County. That specialized group has been training for 12 years.
“We’re really ahead of the curve in our county,” Nenni said. “We do a lot behind the scenes and with critical scene management.”
