The Parkland shooting has become one of the most talked-about mass shootings in American history. It wasn’t the first school shooting, nor the deadliest, but it was still more than bad enough. The fact that the media latched onto the anti-gunners who spawned out of that incident is certainly part of the reason why it’s so talked about.
And the truth is that we don’t do enough to protect our schools. We might disagree on what that should look like, but I’m someone who is willing to entertain almost anything that doesn’t curtail the rights of law-abiding Americans who had nothing to do with what happened. I’m a big fan of hardening our schools, turning them into fortresses that don’t advertise their defenses, but everyone knows they’re there.
And in Broward County in Florida, the home of Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, they’re going to deploy a new technology to potentially stop the next Parkland from happening.
If it works.
The drones zip through school hallways, buzzing loudly like a swarm of bees. They can shoot puffs of pepper spray, flash dizzying lights and hurl themselves at 60 miles per hour at their target: a school shooter.
These non-lethal drones are designed to reach a gunman in 15 seconds. Soon, they’ll be available in a Broward County high school — though it’s not clear when.
Over the last two years, Florida has invested over $1 million into a pilot program that installs the Campus Guardian Angel drones in schools. Broward County Public Schools, where the worst school shooting in the state’s history took place, is one of three school districts participating in the first round of the pilot program. Boyd H. Anderson High in Lauderdale Lakes is poised to be the first Broward school to have the drones, but the pilot program is “still in the planning stages and implementation has not begun,” said BCPS spokesperson Keyla Concepción.
Though the state announced last November that Broward was part of the drone pilot program, the school district “has not evaluated, endorsed, nor authorized any specific drone capabilities, including the deployment of pepper spray,” Concepción said.
In a recent interview, Superintendent Howard Hepburn said there are no details yet on when the drone system at Boyd H. Anderson will be up and running. The boxes that house the drones (but not the drones themselves) were installed in at the school this summer, according to Mithril Defense, the Austin-based company that created Campus Guardian Angel.
We’ve talked about the drones before, and I’m with Cam on the fact that if someone is an active shooter, a less-lethal response seems inappropriate. I want extra-lethal. The only reason I’d say no to putting a nuke on one is the collateral damage from it. Using pepper spray is probably an easier sell to school districts that aren’t going to be down with “killer drones” in schools, but I also think those school districts should rethink that.
But, in the meantime, we’re going to see how the pepper spray drones work out. If they work out.
Luckily, these aren’t tied into any of the AI detection systems that can’t tell the difference between a bag of Doritos and a firearm. Instead, teachers have an app on their phones that they can use if they see someone with a firearm. Mithril Defense claims it will take less than five seconds. Police will be notified and the drones deployed if needed.
The company claims they won’t be used for minor incidents or for surveillance, which is nice, but we’ll have to see if that holds.
Yet the way the system works could introduce a problem. Teachers who think they see a gun might be hesitant to tap the app until they’re certain. If they confront a would-be killer, they might become the first victim, and lives may be lost in the time it takes for another teacher to notify Mithril that there’s a problem.
Even then, though, it’ll still deploy much faster than the police could get there, so there’s a chance it could still save lives. Assuming, of course, that the killer doesn’t shrug off pepper spray as some people do.
That’s why I think this should be, at most, part of a layered approach that includes armed faculty and staff, along with school resource officers on the scene. I know Broward County has a history with SROs who would rather hide than fight during a school shooting, but that’s more reason for a layered approach.
We’ll have to see how these work out. If they do the job, so be it. If not, well, better to find out sooner rather than later, I guess.
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