Town officials said last week that they’re hoping to hire three additional school resource officers for New Canaan Public Schools in time for the start of the next academic year.
The district already has SROs at New Canaan High School and Saxe Middle School, as well as a roving school resource officer for the elementary schools. Discussed in executive session for months as part of a larger safety initiative, the new officers are expected to serve the elementary schools full-time.
“We interviewed people last week, so we’re doing the hiring process, and we’re slated for three seats in the Police Academy,” Police Chief John DiFederico told members of the Board of Selectmen at their Oct. 17 meeting, held at Town Hall and via videoconference.
“It’s a process that we can’t rush,” DiFederico said. “We have pretty high standards in New Canaan and we’re not going to diminish those standards. So we have identified people to move forward in the process and if those people wash out, we’ll start the process again. But we’re on track and fortunately, we’ve been lucky and we’ve found great people. So we’re on track for a January start date for the Police Academy, which would put them to an approximately June graduation.”
The comments came in response to a request from Selectmen Nick Williams for an update on the SRO search while DiFederico requested about $100,000 in funds from the town to purchase eight dash cams for police vehicles.
First Selectman Kevin Moynihan, Seletman Kathleen Corbet and Williams voted 3-0 in favor of the $102,050 contract with Wallingford-based Telrepco.
DiFederico said the department originally had received budget approval for six such dash cameras “but with the increase for the three new officers for the school resource program, we’re looking to add two additional dash cameras to their original budgeted requests.”
Asked by Corbet whether NCPD is purchasing new vehicles too, DiFederico said, “We’ve already received some of the new cars, so what we’ll probably do is trade in less. We’ll just keep two or three in our inventory, so we won’t necessarily purchase three additional. We’ll just not remove the three from our fleet.”
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