Panic Button System Installed

Montgomery County (Penn.) has activated a panic button system at 59 of the 650 schools in the county, to allow teachers and administrators to discretely contact the county’s public safety comm center for help in an emergency. The Countywide Law enforcement Alerting and Safety System (CLASS) includes the creation of school floorplans which officers can access on their mobile laptops. The system was developed and installed in the wake of the shootings at the Lancaster County West Nickel Mines School in Oct. 2006. The system will be expanded to other schools in the coming months, and can be converted to a two-way alerting system to warn schools of bad weather or other area emergencies.