Loudoun police can view every school camera live; draft agreement would set rules for access

By Hannah Prewitt

LEESBURG, Va. — Loudoun County’s sheriff’s office and the Leesburg Police Department can already watch live feeds from every Loudoun County Public Schools camera. A proposed update to the agreement governing police in the county’s schools would, for the first time, put rules for that access in writing.

The proposal came up Oct. 22 at a meeting of the Joint Board of Supervisors/School Board Committee, the first in six months on the memorandum of understanding that sets the terms for school resource officers, Loudoun Now reported. Officers from the Loudoun County Sheriff’s Office or the Leesburg Police Department are stationed at every public middle and high school in the county. The agreement was adopted in 2021 and updated in 2023.

Proposed changes cover live video access, students with disabilities, body-worn cameras, overdose notifications and training, according to Loudoun Now.

Formalizing camera access

Under the proposed language, law enforcement could view live school video when there are concerns for an officer’s health and safety while responding to an incident at a school, and in their official capacities. Recordings would be treated as confidential. Any access would have to be documented at least quarterly, with the date, time, a description of what was viewed and the purpose. The school system’s division counsel would have to be notified of any disclosure to a third party.

“We give access to all cameras at all schools,” John Clark, the school system’s director of safety and security, told the committee, according to Loudoun Now. He said the access extends to cameras at other division facilities and has been in place since 2019, so the new language “is simply formalizing the process.”

“The reason we do it, quite frankly, is we want to provide as much intelligence, as much situational awareness as possible to those responding units,” Clark said. He called it “absolutely a national best practice” and said Fairfax and Prince William counties do the same.

Law enforcement accessed the cameras 37 times last year, for events involving suspicious persons, alerts from the Volt AI detection system, domestic disputes and other issues, Loudoun Now reported. It has done so twice this year.

Lt. Col. Christopher Sawyer of the sheriff’s office said the access is separate from the school resource officer program and runs from the sheriff’s dispatch center. When a call comes in from a school, he said, dispatchers can pull up its cameras to judge whether the call is “immediately legitimate” and to help track a person on campus.

Questions from the School Board

At-large School Board member Anne Donohue asked which cameras were covered and who decides when access is appropriate. Clark said the school system relies on law enforcement’s judgment. School staff told the committee they are not alerted when the sheriff’s office opens a feed and were not aware of any footage being shared with third parties.

School Board Chair April Chandler (Algonkian) said it is important to record each time law enforcement opens the cameras.

The draft also adds body-worn cameras for school resource officers. Sawyer said sheriff’s policy limits recording in schools to law enforcement interactions, which do not include threat assessments, and that footage involving juveniles is largely exempt from public-records requests.

Elementary SROs still unsettled

The talks follow a budget fight in which the sheriff’s office sought money to place resource officers in elementary schools. The Board of Supervisors declined the request and urged the sheriff’s office to work with the School Board, Loudoun Now reported.

The committee did not take up the elementary-school question in depth on Oct. 22. Chandler expressed skepticism, citing studies she said show resource officers do not guarantee better outcomes in school shootings. “Where SROs have proven to be incredibly effective has been in dealing with fights at school,” she said.

The committee is scheduled to meet again Nov. 12 to continue work on the agreement, including what elementary-school resource officers would look like.

The Inquisitor is seeking comment from Loudoun County Public Schools, the Loudoun County Sheriff’s Office, the Leesburg Police Department, the Loudoun County Board of Supervisors and the ACLU of Virginia.