Parkland Families Voice Concerns Over Florida, Texas School Armed Drone Plan

On November 17, the Florida Department of Education announced that three school districts, including Broward County Public Schools, would join a new statewide initiative aimed at deterring potential active shooters in K-12 schools.

Developed in Texas and known as the Campus Guardian Angel program, the program uses drones armed with less-than-lethal pepper spray bullets, flash bangs, and sirens to “distract active shooters” during a potential mass shooting. The drones are flown remotely and controlled by a team of “elite human pilots” from an operations center in Texas.

It’s the same program that was introduced in North Texas in July and has been tested in schools in Waco and Boerne. 

How it works: the drones would already be onsite in “charging pads” at the schools and deployed in as little as 15 seconds to confront a potential shooter after a panic button has been activated. The drones use an escalation of force process and can ram into a potential shooter at up to 60 mph (which CEO Justin Marston said is the equivalent of being hit by a baseball bat). Once a shooter is located, the drones play a deafening siren and can launch pepper spray bombs. They’re also equipped with speakers that can be used by local law enforcement. 

“Ultimately, it’s to save kids’ lives,” Marston said during a demonstration at Florida Atlantic University in June. “Our goal is to respond in five seconds, to be on the shooter in 15 seconds, and to degrade or incapacitate in 60 seconds.”

But while Florida state officials are touting the program as a “solution,” and some Texas lawmakers have been impressed by the program, it doesn’t inspire confidence for everyone — especially some of those most affected by gun violence in Broward schools.

Jackie Corin was 17 years old when she survived the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School shooting on Valentine’s Day 2018, in which a gunman killed 17 people — 14 students and three staff members. She later co-founded March for Our Lives, a national organization dedicated to advancing gun safety legislation and advocacy.

Corin, who is now 25, feels the Campus Guardian Angel program fails to address the root cause of gun violence.

“Every young person deserves to feel safe in their school — not because a drone might swoop in after a shooter opens fire, but because lawmakers chose to prevent that violence in the first place,” Corin tells the Observer’s sister paper Miami New Times. “This new drone program may make headlines, but it doesn’t address the root of the crisis our generation has been living with for years.”

The drones, which come in boxes of six for $15,000, are permanently stored in ceiling-high containers on site, allowing for instantaneous deployment.

Corin notes that while the Campus Guardian Angel Program is being rolled out, Florida House Republicans are advancing HB 133, which lowers the minimum age to buy rifles from 21 to 18, making it easier for teenagers to buy guns. She also notes that the state recently legalized open carry.

“If [Florida] lawmakers were serious about keeping students safe, they’d vote no on HB 133 and focus on preventing gun violence — not preparing to manage it with drones,” she says.

Those concerns are echoed by Manuel Oliver, whose son Joaquin “Guac” Oliver was killed in the Marjory Stoneman Douglas shooting. He tells New Times that he believes the program represents a “failure” of political leadership and our societal priorities.

“I think the gun industry found a way to promote solutions that not only normalize the problem, but also create new business opportunities,” Manuel says. “I’m afraid these are the solutions of a nation that refuses to fix the problem.”

Following the Texas drone demo in July, Marston acknowledged that while solutions are needed to prevent gun violence before a shooter steps onto campus, his product is designed to address the current reality and to hopefully prevent more deaths, regardless.  

“The majority of students, and certainly the majority of students we have talked to, either they themselves or one of their immediate friends, have been in a gun-related lockdown that they thought was real,” said Marston. “We think that the normalcy of the availability of guns in schools is creating trauma in our next generation of kids.”

After their son was killed, Manuel and his wife, Patricia, founded Change the Ref, a nonprofit that empowers future generations and advocates for gun control through creative activism. Manuel says that the Campus Guardian Program represents the “opposite” of the work he and his wife are doing.

“What we do requires bravery, requires breaking the norm and going against something that is simply bad for all of us,” Manuel says. “What we do is the opposite of these business ideas.”

He points to countries such as Australia, New Zealand, and the United Kingdom as models for effective gun safety. Not only do these countries have lower rates of gun violence, but, as Manuel puts it, “There’s not a business opportunity behind gun violence in any of these places.”

“I’m so sorry that we live in a country — in such a great country, with all the resources, with all the opportunities to fix this easy thing to solve without wasting any money — where we do this instead and lie to the people pretending that we are solving the problem,” he says. “Shame on us.”