Coordinating with Local Law Enforcement

4 best practices before an emergency occurs help public schools streamline incident response and navigate the unknown with confidence.

• By Jill Renihan
• September 18, 2026

At the moment a critical incident occurs, both school staff and law enforcement need to have the confidence — and a little bit of predictability — to navigate the crisis. School security administrators can boost coordination efforts with law enforcement by following a few best practices centered on fostering strong inter-agency relationships, creating a safety-minded culture, clearly defining staff and emergency responder roles, and ensuring all plans are well-documented and well-tested.

Emergency incidents can be chaotic situations. That chaos can be minimized or countered with good communication and solid procedures that align, but much of the work with law enforcement must be done beforehand.

Build relationships. The effectiveness of any response is decreased significantly if school staff are not on the same page as emergency responders. Therefore, the first step for school administrators to build coordinated response efforts with local law enforcement is to cultivate strong relationships.

Relationships take time to build and school security stakeholders must take the time to initiate those relationships early and foster them often. This work can be made more possible if the top layers of school leadership believe and invest in a culture focused on safety and strong partnerships. While superintendents may not be a part of the day-to-day conversations surrounding incident response procedures, they can start relationships with heads of law enforcement to pave the way for the school security point person and the law enforcement liaison to form a close partnership.

While multiple people within the public school system will have ownership over safety and security, including the school board, principals and superintendent, one point person should manage the daily efforts, including being in close contact with the local law enforcement and emergency response agencies within the jurisdiction, ensuring protocols are written and followed, and assuring staff are well-trained.

The school security point person should establish a multidisciplinary team that includes law enforcement partners, other key public safety agencies, school administrators, and functions such as mental health counselors. Partners should meet regularly and talk often to collaborate on everything from training to security technology to roles and procedures.

Some school districts may have more than one law enforcement agency within their boundaries. Including contact from every relevant agency in frequent conversations helps instill trust on all sides and strengthens response efforts.

Assess risk together for a valuable perspective. Conducting regular site visits with law enforcement partners can help strengthen a school’s incident response efforts in a number of ways, such as by identifying vulnerabilities from the perimeter to the inside, assessing technology needs, and even addressing wayfinding — such as maps, building signage, etc. School administrators should bounce ideas off their law enforcement contacts, show them their response plans, and ask for feedback.

Tackling security gaps with technology can increase situational awareness and positively impact incident response further. Law enforcement partners can help identify some of those needs that school administrators have not thought of or produce questions or scenarios to research when vetting technology.

School security leaders should also involve law enforcement in the development and delivery of training, from tabletop drills to full-scale exercises. By bringing their unique perspective, law enforcement can help school administrators produce ‘what if’ scenarios of real value, allowing everyone to be more fully prepared for the unknown. If schools have school resource officers or SROs, those relationships can be particularly beneficial in collaborating on tailored scenarios and vulnerabilities that are relevant to the school or district itself.

Clearly define roles and protocols. Because educators and law enforcement have different levels of accountability, as well as different focuses and priorities when it comes to emergency response and preparedness, close partnerships help school administrators and law enforcement gain valuable perspective on each other’s breadth of obligations, how they process and approach threats, and where their responsibilities lie.

Gaining perspective of each other’s viewpoints will go a long way in building trust and aligning response efforts, but because each side has those distinct roles and perspectives, it can be easy to become misaligned or misunderstood without clear Memorandums of Understanding (MOUs). It is imperative for school administrators to establish MOUs to help avoid confusion during coordinated efforts and reduce legal and operational risks.

Well-developed MOUs will expressly define roles, responsibilities, authority, communication protocols, and operational expectations. MOUs should also address what information schools can share, how they will share it, and protections for student and staff information. Doing so balances emergency preparedness with student and staff rights and separates school discipline from law enforcement functions, while establishing unified response procedures and ensuring partners operate with trust and a shared understanding.

Key components of successful MOUs often include protocols surrounding:

• Purpose and scope of the school district and law enforcement partnerships
• Defined roles and responsibilities of law enforcement and school administrators and staff
• SRO expectations, duties and limitations
• Communication protocols for law enforcement, students, parents and media
• Information sharing and confidentiality with outside parties
• Incident reporting requirements
• Frequency and types of training and exercises
• School access protocols, including emergency key access, maps and floor plans, technology use and visitor management
• Use of force and weapons
• Student rights and legal considerations
• Emergency response procedures and protocols, and reunification procedures

Plan frequent training. With defined roles and protocols in place, testing those established procedures is an especially important part of ensuring a coordinated response when every second counts. So how much training is often enough?

The more, the better. Regular training allows everyone involved to build muscle memory when it comes to response, allowing that training to take over when the chaos of an emergency swoops in. In addition to testing procedures already in place, training prepares staff and law enforcement for the unexpected. It allows school staff and administrators to learn what to do in the period between the call for help and when emergency responders are able to arrive, as well as prepare for the time after the threat has ended.

Training should be frequent, varied and unpredictable. Tabletop exercises, drills conducted without advanced notice (but clearly announced as drills when the begin), email quizzes, and regular “what if” discussions can, and should, supplement full-blown exercises and keep staff engaged, helping to build a safety-minded culture. While it is important to engage students in training as well, regular training with just staff, administrators and law enforcement gives all those involved an opportunity to work on the repetition of their roles without managing students.

Accomplishing coordinated response requires fostering relationships with law enforcement, assessing risk as a team, clearly defining roles and procedures, and incorporating plenty of training. By starting the journey of creating a unified effort to keep students and staff safe through strategic partnerships with law enforcement, school administrators can navigate emergencies, streamline incident response, and adapt to a changing threat landscape.

This article originally appeared in the September/October 2026 issue of Campus Security Today.