Police chief says Atwater schools are safe in new plan to rotate campus officers

Staffing issues in the Atwater Police Department have led to some changes in how officers oversee a local high school campus, giving rise to questions from the public about school safety.

The Valley Community School campus in Atwater typically has one officer assigned to the campus daily, according to interim Police Chief Armando Echevarria. Under a new temporary plan, the campus will see a rotating schedule of officers, he said.

"This is nothing new that has not been done by previous administrators of the department," he said.

It's common for officers to be shuffled around to cover during vacations or when an officer is at training, he said. School districts throughout Merced County contract with local police or the Merced County Sheriff's Office to have officers on campus.

Echevarria noted that officers are not at every campus every hour of the day because they are sometimes called to respond to incidents in the city when necessary. Not every one of the more than a dozen schools in town has a resource officer, he said.

The department has 24 sworn officers, including administrative officers, he said.

The concerns around school safety have been acute in recent weeks after a shooting Feb. 14 in Parkland, Florida, that left 17 children dead. Since then, schools around the country have received threats of potential violence, including several in Merced County.

"These issues unfortunately are becoming a daily occurrence," Echevarria said. "I think our agency is well prepared to respond to any type of threat that could potentially materialize at any of the schools."

The Atwater campus is overseen by the Merced County Office of Education. The county office is satisfied with the plan to cover the schools, according to spokesman Nathan Quevedo.

"MCOE places the highest priority on student safety and will work with law enforcement to make sure that all of our students and school sites are safe," he said.

This story was originally published March 20, 2018 at 4:15 PM with the headline "Police chief says Atwater schools are safe in new plan to rotate campus officers."