Billerica Police | MA

Members of the Billerica Community:

Last week, we found ourselves confronted with yet another senseless tragedy as we witnessed the horrific murder of innocent students and teachers at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas.  We are heartbroken for the families and friends of the victims, and offer our condolences to the entire Uvalde community.  We are also sickened that we live in a society where these shootings continue to occur, and call on our colleagues in federal and state government to take actions to eliminate this threat to our children.

The safety and security of our students and staff is of the utmost importance.  And we are grateful to have such a strong partnership in Billerica between the schools and our local and regional public safety officials.  For many years, the Billerica Public Schools, Billerica Police Department, Billerica Fire Department, and the Middlesex District Attorney’s Office have been working together to ensure that we have safety and emergency response plans in place to respond to any crisis.  These plans are reviewed and updated annually, and we are proud of the strong working relationship that we have among all of these agencies.  This includes our community-based justice meetings where schools, public safety officials, and the District Attorney’s office share information to ensure that vulnerable children do not “fall through the cracks”.

As part of our emergency response preparedness, we have been conducting enhanced lockdown drills in all of our schools in the event of an active shooter.  Since 2015, we have used the ALICE protocol, which stands for the non-sequential strategies of “Alert, Lockdown, Inform, Counter, and Evacuate”, and provides staff and students with a toolkit of options if ever faced with a life-threatening situation.  For more information about ALICE, please see our memo from 2015 that introduced ALICE to the community at https://tinyurl.com/BPSALICE0415.

In addition to ALICE drills, both police and school officials implement a number of strategies to ensure the safety of everyone in our schools.  These strategies include:

• Locked and secured school buildings, with limited points of access during the day, monitored by high technology video surveillance
• Use of Raptor Visitor Management System at the front desk of each school building to screen visitors and respond to emergencies
• Identification of school resources officers who receive specialized training, and act as liaisons between the school and police departments
• Billerica Police Department’s Adopt-A-School Program, where patrol officers are assigned to check on schools to proactively create a positive relationship between police and school officials, and to monitor for external security
• Partnership with the Northeast Massachusetts Law Enforcement Council (NEMLEC) for regional support, including the School Threat Assessment and Response System (STARS) program
• Middlesex District Attorney’s Office Community Based Justice (CBJ) program, where school officials, public safety officials, and the District Attorney’s office share information to ensure that vulnerable children do not “fall through the cracks”
• School-based crisis teams in each building, comprised of administrators, teachers, and mental health professionals, who are ready to proactively address students’ mental health needs, as well as react to support in times of crisis
• Police training of immediate response to active shooter situations that specifically recognize the need to neutralize threats as they occur, and training in Critical Casualty Care to provide rapid treatment to traumatic injuries
• Partnership between Billerica Police, Fire, and EMS in the area of Rescue Task Force responses

While all of these elements are important, it is also essential that we make sure that we continue to have warm and welcoming environments that value the worth and significance of each member of our school community.  Our focus on the social and emotional health of our students has been a cornerstone of our work for many years – and when students have positive relationships with their peers, their schools, and their community, the likelihood of violent behavior drops dramatically.

Given recent events, we know that it is easy to be consumed by fear.  But we also know that we cannot let this fear dominate our thinking to the point that it destroys what makes our schools such an important place of warmth, growth, and happiness in our children’s lives.

Every day that our students are in schools, there are hundreds and hundreds of adults  that work to ensure their safety – teachers, nurses, social workers, paraprofessionals, custodians, secretaries, cafeteria workers, administrators, police officers, firefighters, and many, many more.  We are proud of the work that they do every day, and know that your children are in good hands under their care.

Timothy G. Piwowar
Superintendent of Schools

John C. Curran
Town Manager

Roy W. Frost
Chief of Police

The Billerica Police Department just conducted a Community-Wide Survey on Local Policing in order to gauge various metrics related to community sentiment as to how well we are doing ranging from engagement and partnership to perceptions of safety and security. We also sought to gauge the level of community trust in its police while also determining where residents would like to see more police resources allocated in the future.

The survey was sent out to residents primarily through Nextdoor and Twitter, where we requested only town residents and businesses to participate. Currently there are 8,104 verified households in Billerica using Nextdoor, which is an internet-based information sharing tool used to bring neighbors and neighborhoods together for positive exchanges. Over the 14-day period the survey was active, we received 342 completed responses, which is a response rate of just over 4%.

A review of the responses indicate that our police department is doing very well in the area of community trust and engagement, with over 85% of respondents reporting that the department does develop relationships with community members, while also showing strong efforts towards communication and problem solving. In terms of Community Policing, defined in the survey whereby the police work with the community to address the root causes of crime through a wide range of
activities, approximately 80% of the survey respondents felt the police utilized community policing
principals either “somewhat” or “to a great extent”.

When looking towards programs that are offered through the Billerica Police Department, respondents gauged their relative importance in the following averages, where 10 was “very important” to 1 being “not important at all”. The highest responses on these programs were as follows:

One area of interest from the survey was a desire by residents to engage in a neighborhood citizen crime watch group. Over 61% of respondents expressed a desire to participate in a “crime watch group”. A great way for residents to organize a Neighborhood Crime Watch group is through Nextdoor. Currently Nextdoor in Billerica has 40 distinct geographically contiguous neighborhoods consisting of 11,711 verified resident members. Resident representatives from each of the 40 verified neighborhoods are able to create a group for that neighborhood for the purpose of sharing crime and safety information. Relevant information from the groups could later be shared at the groups’ discretion with the Billerica Police, who would then assign officers who covers that groups’ geographic sector across three separate patrol shifts over a 24-hour period. Working directly with the residents in that group will allow officers and residents to work together to identify solutions to the issues at hand and, later, evaluate their effectiveness.

We will be conducting similar surveys in the future in an effort to evaluate the effectiveness of our programs and the wants and needs of the community. Please use out department website to see the various services we offer the community as well as to provide direct input on how we can better improve our services.

Thank you again for all those who participated in the Community-Wide Survey on Local Policing.

Respectfully,

Chief Roy W Frost

Complete survey results are available here – Survey Results