City Council votes to have more officers in Schenectady city schools

The Schenectady City Council will move forward with the plan to increase police in the schools.

This has been an on-going debate for a while now.

School resource officers are already in the school, but the plan would increase their numbers to six full time officers.

Schenectady Mayor Gary McCarthy says they have a number of people calling for police assistance, and he thinks it’ll be better having officers in the school who are familiar with the students. "Do you put officers there on a random basis of drawing from sometimes different parts of the city or do you put officers there that are scheduled that are part of the community that’s within the schools," he said at the meeting.

The district wants to choose police that have roots in the city or alum from the district. The police would be called community engagements officers to erase the stigma —but not everyone is a fan.

The proposal states the district will pay the city $50,000 for each of the officers to start with, with a $2,000 annual increase for the next two years of the agreement.