Provincial police making presence known around Rainy River District schools

The Ontario Provincial Police have become more visible at area schools.

This includes in-school visits and patrols around schools.

OPP Staff Sergeant Derrick McLean says they are scheduling officers to ensure every school in the Rainy River District is visited at least once during the week.

“Every day, we focus on three schools specifically where we want to see those patrols take place,” says McLean.

“By doing that throughout the district, it spreads them out, so in any given week, every school has been visited by the officers.”

More than 13.5 hours of school patrols were recorded over the last two months.

McLean suspects the number is actually much higher, as officers may still be getting adjusted to the need to accurately record their time when they are at the schools.

Not all of the police presence is for safety reasons inside the school.

McLean says officers are also focusing attention on what is happening away from the school grounds.

“Maybe it’s a case where we’ve had something like an issue with maybe kiss and ride and traffic there. So maybe not specifically in the school, but the officers are kind of monitoring.”