Drones for School Safety
Introduction to Campus Guardian Angel
Drones buzzed through the hallways and corridors of Lancaster Middle School on Monday. The three drones, swirling up and down the staircases in the entrance at about 50 miles per hour, weren’t about fun, but safety during active shooter events. Austin-based company Campus Guardian Angel demonstrated its active shooter emergency response drones Monday at Lancaster. With drones already implemented in the Miami-Dade County Public Schools district, as well as in Boerne ISD and Waco ISD, the company hopes to be able to implement this emergency response strategy in schools across the Dallas area.
How the Drones Work
Campus Guardian Angel CEO Justin Marston said at the demo on Monday that the point of the drone is to distract, keeping the assailant occupied while law enforcement is on the way. Marston said that if the assailant is too busy trying to shoot down the drone, they will spend less time harming people and potentially taking human lives.
“The thing is, we get shot, we don’t care. We’re just a lump of plastic, so we’re prepared to take any risk that’s necessary,” Marston said. Marston said each drone plays a different role in confronting an assailant. One drone may locate and track every move of the assailant, while another will distract and delay their actions. Each drone is controlled by trained drone pilots.
Arming the Drones
The drones are armed with less-than-lethal pepper balls, designed to disarm the assailant temporarily until law enforcement arrives. They are also equipped with a “punch” that can break through glass if needed to reach an assailant.
Once law enforcement arrives on the scene, the drones can help them navigate through a school they may not be familiar with, cutting down the time required to locate an assailant and ensuring the safety of responding officers.
Support from State Officials
State Sen. Royce West, D-Dallas, emphasized the need for new solutions to keep Texas schools safe. “As far as I’m concerned, we’ve got to protect the children. We have to be able to disrupt intruders,” West said. “We saw what happened in Uvalde. School resource officers were hesitant to go into that room, and so what you’ve got to recognize is, there’s a danger for them also, but they are there on the front line.”
West also emphasized the need for these programs to be accessible and affordable for school districts and the state to fund these solutions. According to the Campus Guardian website, implementing the program would cost a school $4 per student per month, with a box of six drones costing an additional $15,000.
Affordability and Accessibility
“We’ve tried to make it affordable. I mean, frankly, private schools have told us they would pay 10 times what we’re asking to get this,” Marston said. “But, you know, public schools don’t have that kind of funding, and so it was really important to us to try and figure out making all of the components low-cost, enough to be affordable for every school, rather than just a tool for the wealthiest school districts and private schools.”
Response from Dallas Independent School District
Dallas Independent School District police Chief Albert Martinez emphasized the need to open up different avenues for drones. Wilmer-Hutchins High School in DISD had a school shooting in April, its second in a year. Several students and a teacher were injured. Martinez did not address the Wilmer-Hutchins shootings at the demonstration on Monday, but said he’d need to see more for the district to invest in the technology.
Martinez said he feels that if Campus Guardian Angel can expand drone usage into responding to daily issues
