FLORIDA – Florida education officials are exploring a new, high-tech approach to school safety — one that involves drones designed to respond faster than any human could during an active shooter situation.
A company called Campus Guardian Angels, led by Austin-based CEO Justin Marston, has developed nonlethal drones capable of confronting a shooter within seconds of a threat being detected.
“The key thing with what we’re doing is we put the drones on site already — just like the sprinkler system is there already,” Marston said. “Because we’re there already, we can respond really fast. Our goal is to respond in five seconds and be on the shooter in 15 seconds.”
Each drone is equipped with nonlethal deterrents, including piercing sirens, bright lights and loudspeakers to command suspects to surrender. If necessary, the drones can release bursts of pepper spray or even ram into a shooter to disorient or disable them until law enforcement arrives.
Marston said his team, made up of former Navy SEALs, SWAT officers and elite drone pilots, monitors crises in real time from an operations center in Austin, Texas. There, coordinators use a “digital twin” of each school, allowing them to guide drones through the building remotely during emergencies.
In smaller elementary schools, Marston said, a system might include 18 drones stored in six boxes throughout the building. Larger high schools could have as many as 90 drones on site.
Florida lawmakers have allocated $557,000 for a pilot program to deploy the drones at three schools across the state.
School safety advocate Max Schachter, whose 14-year-old son Alex was killed in the 2018 shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, said he supports the idea.
“Every parent’s worst nightmare is sending their kids to school and not having them come home,” Schachter said. “When you have a mass murderer intent on killing your son or daughter, the most important thing is that you stop the killing. Any way we can stop the murderer from hurting innocent children and staff — I’m in favor of it.”
Seventeen people were killed in the Parkland shooting, where the school resource officer did not enter the building during the attack, and deputies arrived 11 minutes after the shooting began.
Marston said the cost of the drone system averages $4 to $8 per student per month. Florida’s pilot program will help determine whether the technology is worth expanding statewide.
As we mentioned, the Florida Legislature has approved more than a half a million dollars for the pilot program and will decide if drones are worth the investment statewide in the coming months.