Darien School Safety and Security
Darien Public Schools Director of Security, Leon Krolikowski, will discuss how the Darien School District is embracing best practices in school safety and security. The talk will include discussions about the district’s armed school security officers (SSOs), campus monitors, training, accreditation, best practices, and related initiatives that will enhance the district’s safety and security.
Leon Krolikowski has been the Darien Public Schools Director of Security since January 9, 2023. Before coming to Darien, Leon was a member of the New Canaan Police Department for over 34 years. Before becoming Chief in June 2013, he served in many different Department roles and ranks of increasing responsibility.
While working full-time, Leon earned an M.B.A., a law degree, completed an executive education course at the Harvard Kennedy School of Government, and began coursework towards a Ph.D. He is admitted to practice law in the States of Connecticut and New York, Connecticut Federal Court, the United States Court of Appeals for the Armed Forces, and the United States Tax Court. Leon is a graduate of the F.B.I. National Academy in Quantico, Virginia, and he is a Marine Corps Infantry Combat Veteran.
Leon has lived in New Canaan for over 32 years. He has been married to his wife, Anna, for 29 years and has three children, Morgan, Kelsey, and Ryan.
Speaker Summary
Darien School Security Director Leon Krolikowsi provided a comprehensive review of the history, current program, and some of the future initiatives for the Darien Public School Security Program. He explained that the focus is on prevention and mitigation to minimize risk and the likelihood of issues and emergencies requiring a response by his team, while ensuring they are trained and prepared should the need arise.
Leon talked about the roles of the 3 groups currently providing support and safety at the Darien schools: Campus Monitors, School Resource Officers at Darien High School and Middlesex Middle School (active uniformed members of the Darien Police Department) and the armed elementary school SSO’s (School Safety Officers, all retired former police officers). He then detailed the screening, hiring and training of the SSO’s, their specific roles and responsibilities and their day-to-day activities and reporting relationships within the schools.
He also talked to the importance of the SSO’s as it relates to response time in the unlikely case of an incident in a school and how an on-site officer dramatically reduces the risk by discouraging would-be attackers and/or shortening the response time from a few/several minutes to as little as seconds. He shared notable examples from across the country and how depending primarily on outside resources like the local police department resulted in response times of as long as 77 minutes or, in even the best case, 6 minutes. In all cases there was a loss of lives and substantial injuries that having a trained officer committed to action on-site might have reduced.
Leon also explained the ongoing work being done through desktop planning and exercises to better prepare the SSO’s and school staff to handle a broad range of scenarios and talked about testing and development of new approaches and technologies to improve school safety and reduce risk. He also talked about Darien being the first K-12 public school system in the country to be pursuing the highest level of safety accreditation.
His presentation was followed by a short Q&A. His most emphatic answer was to the question of whether arming teachers to deal with potential emergencies was a good idea. His response was “No. No. No.” due to the risks of someone having a gun without the experience and training to truly know when to use it.
The clear takeaway of Leon’s talk was Darien’s commitment and progress towards offering a best-in-class school safety program to protect the town’s most valuable asset – its children.