Marblehead High to use grant money to install cameras

MARBLEHEAD – Marblehead has been approved for a $44,000 Community Oriented Policing Services (COPS) grant and plans to use it to buy security cameras for Marblehead High School.Police Chief Robert Picariello said the police and the School Department worked together to apply for the grant under the COPS Secure Our Schools program.The grant is for half the $88,000 the town is looking to spend.?We?ve had a fair amount of damage to the high school due to vandalism,” Picariello said. “We?re always thinking about school security, first from the viewpoint of safety of the kids from intruders and then losses to the building from vandalism or breaking and entering at night.”One noteworthy incident of vandalism was discovered just before midnight Friday, June 4, 2010, a few hours after the senior banquet. Broken windows and damage to classrooms and halls in the school science wing was estimated at $5,000, but much of it was cleaned up before Sunday afternoon?s graduation ceremonies.The School Committee?s Security Subcommittee will decide what type of cameras to order and where to locate them, Picariello said.Marblehead High Principal Kenneth Weinstein said he is looking forward to getting the cameras installed – the target date is December.?Right now we don?t have any way of observing any of the 28 doors at the high school. This is a huge building and we?re eager to have a better ability to do that,” he said. “Twenty-eight is a lot of doors.”The cameras will be hooked up to recording devices. Weinstein said he expects the recordings to be viewed on an incident-by-incident basis. “We don?t have enough staff to have someone monitoring the cameras,” he said, recalling his days at a private school which had a security person working at a front desk, watching security monitor screens.