Lower thirds:

0:03  Report by / Janelle Dumalaon
1:03  Tyrone Morrow / Chief of School District Police
2:06  Khristof Oborski, Director of Tactical Operations, Campus Guardian Angel
3:09  Justin Marston, CEO Campus Guardian Angel

Script:

Can drones stop school shootings? One start-up says they can. Campus Guardian says this is how their tech works: Say there's a school shooter. Small black drones, sitting in ceiling boxes, burst free. Indoors, they can move at up to 100 kilometers per hour. 

The drones fly in waves. In tests, the company says they can break through windows, trigger strobe lights and sirens, and fire pepper gel at a shooter — or physically collide with them to engage or disable them. 

Campus Guardian Angel says the system is designed to address what security experts often describe as the most dangerous window in a school shooting — the time between the first alert and the moment law enforcement makes contact with the attacker  

Tyrone Morrow is in charge of the law enforcement officers assigned to this school district. He found the demonstration promising.  

+++SOT Tyrone Morrow, Chief of School District Police+++ 

Safety is neither convenient nor cheap. So you're either going to pay now or you're going to have to pay later. And the goal is, you know, what price tag do you put on a child's life? // I think it would be a phenomenal piece of equipment because it can give us real time information real quick. And more importantly, it puts my officer in a better position to tactically be able to respond to an active threat or active shooter on one of our campuses. 

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According to health policy research organization KFF, a student in school today is far more likely to spend a school year at a school where a shooting takes place than a student was in the early 2000s - nearly three times as likely.  

As that risk has grown, the school security industry has expanded too - from surveillance cameras, metal detectors and AI-powered threat detection. Many schools also have dedicated police officers, known as school resource officers, or SROs. 

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Khristof Oborski  was himself a former school resource officer. These days he's the Director of Tactical Operations at Campus Guardian Angel. 

+++SOT Khristof Oborski, Director of Tactical Operations, Campus Guardian Angel+++ 

This is one of four operation centers that we will have here at this location. In this space, there are 11 seats for pilots, and then you have seven members that are controlling different aspects of the communication piece, as well as a threat tracker. 

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From operations centers like this, teams are meant to monitor incidents in real time - tracking the attacker’s location, relaying information to law enforcement, and communicating with teachers sheltering in classrooms through a dedicated app. A commander ultimately decides whether force should be used - in this case Oborski. 

+++SOT Khristof Oborski, Director of Tactical Operations, Campus Guardian Angel+++ 

The pilots are the best drone racing pilots in the world. But they're not law enforcement. They don't have years of tactical experience. So the person in the TOC commander seat articulates the use of force - if any force - and the pilots' job is just to fly the drone. 

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The system is still in its early stages. Campus Guardian Angel is currently being piloted in Florida schools at a cost of $557,000 to the state, with Georgia next. Founder and CEO Justin Marston has nationwide ambitions. 

+++SOT Justin Marston, CEO Campus Guardian Angel+++  

Gun violence is the number one way that children in America get killed, both in schools and generally. But every child is much more precious than the dollars spent protecting them. 

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When asked whether drones address symptoms rather than the root cause, Marston is direct — gun laws are not his fight. 

+++SOT Justin Marston, CEO Campus Guardian Angel+++  

We can continue to have debates around gun control, but there are so many guns. I don't know that there is some magical answer to that. It's a fundamental right in America. And so pragmatically, we're just looking at this and saying: the thing I can help with is stopping lunatics with guns murdering children in schools. 

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Discussing the gun control situation is also  a non-starter n schools, says Ken Trump. He has spent four decades as a school security consultant.  

+++SOT Ken Trump, School Security Consultant+++ 

The issue of guns has become very politicized. Very polarized, and people are in their corners and locked in, and there is no in-between in the U.S. politically. The message that I used to always say to parents and still say today is, I'm not going to get into the politics of gun control and gun rights, because either way you lose the conversation. 

+++ 

But he’s not convinced that Campus Guardian Angel is the answer. 

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 +++SOT Ken Trump, School Security Consultant+++ 

To suggest that somebody is going to be setting blocks or states away operating a drone, like you're playing a game on an Xbox may sound good, it may sound attractive. It may sound like wow, high tech. We're going to do this, but it's it's unproven. It's something that some states have shaken loose some money for to test the theory, but schools aren't guinea pigs, and kids aren't should be guinea pigs, and we shouldn't be testing hypothetical and proven types of far out ideas, just because it sounds good, or because the technology is out there and people have good intentions, there's no evidence that this would actually work as described in a real active assailant incidents 

+++ 

Rather - what schools need isn't necessarily something on the cutting edge of technology, Trump says. 

+++ 

+++SOT Ken Trump, School Security Consultant+++ 

As one principal said it best: 'What I really need are cameras that work and more bodies, more adults to help me supervise this campus”. He didn't ask for drones.

+++ 

For now, Campus Guardian Angel keeps pitching its system to more schools across the country. What schools are currently doing is clearly not working one hundred percent of the time, and that gap is exactly what's driving industry solutions like this one. The technology can only truly prove itself during an actual school shooting, and if it works even once, every school district in America will likely want it. Yet as long as America's gun laws remain what they are, stopping shooters and preventing them may both be necessary, and neither may ever be enough.  

END