Floyd County schools in talks to improve safety with police K9s

Floyd County school officials will discuss on Wednesday adding firearm and vape detecting police dogs to the schools as another measure to improve safety.

The school system has been coordinating with Global K9 and the Floyd County Police Department on the matter, Superintendent Glenn White said.

Global K9 is a veteran-owned company that offers K9 training and provides trained K9s to various government organizations and entertainment businesses for detection services. The company has a school safety program where K9s are dispatched to schools to detect firearms and provide extra safety to students.

If agreed upon, Floyd County Schools will have two K9s, one trained to detect vapes and another to detect firearms, White said.

“These dogs are specially bred for this,” he said. “They can detect weapons better than a metal detector.”

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The school system updated its safety plans in the middle of September, following a shooting at Apalachee High School at the beginning of the month. As a part of the school system’s new safety protocols, FCS hired more school resource officers to ensure at least two SROs at each school.

The new resource officers are in training, but should join Floyd County Schools in the next few months, White said.

The SROs will be assigned to high schools but will patrol middle and elementary schools as well, Floyd County Police Chief Mark Wallace said. Along with the additional SROs, the school system has hired off-duty county police officers to work at the schools and school events. The officers have the same duties as SROs and will be at Floyd County Schools for the school year.

“We want our school to be as safe as possible,” White said.

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Rachel Hartdegen, Rome News-Tribune

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