Newport Beach City Council seeks ‘real-time’ campus camera access for school police

A school resource officer program approved by Newport Beach City Council on Tuesday included several updates to “enhance safety and security” at Newport-Mesa Unified School District campuses.

The program, which has been in place since 2000, already assigns an officer to Newport Harbor High School and another officer to cover the campus shared by Corona del Mar High and Middle schools.

A third officer, based out of Ensign Middle School, fills in on assignment when the other two officers are off duty.

The updated agreement allows school resource officers access to student records, campus cameras, security and tip reporting systems through the district. Student records are conditional based on a “legitimate educational interest.”

But the new contract didn’t go quite far enough from the perspective of council members, as the city splits the cost with the district on the three officers.

“The agreement still fails to address a key issue, which is integral to ensuring student safety,” said Councilmember Lauren Kleiman, “and that’s the installation of a robust, modern camera system on all campuses with provisions to provide real-time access to the police department in the event of a critical incident.”

Kleiman invited the district to resume negotiations on that front.

“We cannot afford to have these campuses be blind spots,” she said.

Newport Beach Police Chief Dave Miner endorsed the notion.

“We’ve invested a lot of time, thought and resources into expanding our technology footprint,” he said. “Having a robust and accessible camera system on school campuses certainly would…provide us real-time access to information to better respond to critical incidents.”

The district’s board of education voted to renew the school resource officer program for the 2025-26 school year during its June 24 meeting. A district spokesperson was unavailable to comment on cameras.

Councilmember Robyn Grant spoke with police officers and district officials ahead of the council meeting.

“It’s my understanding…that the cameras are being researched and will be shortly implemented,” she said. “It’s just a timing issue. Right now, we have the [school resource officer] contract and we’re looking at subsequent agreements that would engage on the camera portion.”

Assistant City Manager Tara Finnigan noted during the council meeting that the district, indeed, has a draft agreement as of Tuesday related to camera systems that they would like to work with the City Council on.

Until then, the council voted unanimously to adopt the school resource officer program agreement.

“We want to make sure that if anything ever happens within our schools, we have the very best resources to respond,” said Councilmember Noah Blom. “We just want to make sure the safety and security of our children is front and foremost to everything we do.”