Suffolk police end some school patrol shift changes amid safety review

Suffolk police have ended some patrol shift changes at schools as Commissioner Kevin Catalina reviews how the department covers campuses and allocates officers. The move comes as the department tries to keep school safety visible while reworking assignments that affect what parents and students see at pickup, dismissal and during the school day.

Catalina, sworn in as the department’s 16th commissioner in February 2025, has made school security a central part of his approach. In 2024, after visiting a Nassau County intelligence center that tracks potential school threats, he created a similar threat matrix for Suffolk. He also pointed to an incident at the Brentwood High School Ross Center in which officials found bullets, saying the case underscored why the department has been pressing school-related planning.

The department’s school safety effort reaches beyond patrol timing. The Suffolk County Police Department’s Community Relations Bureau says School Resource Officers make presentations in middle and high schools on internet safety, drugs and alcohol, vehicle safety, what to do when stopped by police and police-employment opportunities. Those presentations have become part of the department’s public-facing case for keeping officers close to school communities even as some shift changes are rolled back.

The Suffolk County PBA has argued repeatedly that police presence in schools is integral to child safety and has said it has worked with school stakeholders on school safety and anti-police-bias concerns. The union has also said it has no greater priority than protecting children, putting it squarely on the side of a stronger police role inside schools rather than a reduced one.

The issue is not new in Suffolk. Police and Suffolk County school superintendents previously agreed on a job description for school resource officers after earlier disputes over how officers should operate in school buildings and on campuses. That history matters now because any change in patrol scheduling can affect how much visibility students and parents see, even if the broader school resource officer structure remains in place.

Suffolk police’s First Precinct page also says officers are assigned to school resource officer duties, showing that school coverage is woven into broader precinct operations rather than treated as a separate, standalone assignment. As Suffolk heads into the fall, the question for families is not whether school safety remains a priority, but how the department plans to prove that a new deployment is safer, steadier or more efficient than the old one.