The Palm Beach County Police Department announced today the launch of a smartphone application that aims to improve student safety in schools and “anticipate” possible shootings.
The application “See Something Say Something” is a new technological tool that “will be very useful” to nullify potential violent actions, said at a press conference Palm Beach Sheriff Ric Bradshaw and the superintendent of county schools, Robert Avossa.
In fact, this application will serve to interconnect students, parents, and staff of educational centers and maintain the flow of information and alerts about potential threats or suspicious activities.
Designed for Apple phones and Android devices, the application, which will be available soon, facilitates an “information flow” to the authorities and the “possibility to report”, by the students, any incident or suspicion that exists.
Bradshaw was against the initiative to arm the teachers, because, he said at the press conference, they need trained professionals who know how to react quickly, and “not late.”
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“That’s not the job (of the teachers),” he said, adding that a shooting or an attack takes three or four minutes and “trained professionals” are needed to confront the aggressor and the emergency situation.
“Arming teachers is not the solution,” said Bradshaw, who expressed confidence in the usefulness of this application, whose operation will be conveniently explained to the parents of students and disseminated through posters and videos.
He took the opportunity to warn that the weight of the law will fall harshly on those who make false alarms and, if they are students, they will be expelled from the teaching center and imprisoned.
In the end, the application seeks to have a flow of information that allows the police to anticipate “subjects potentially willing to attack” in educational institutions.
This initiative comes eight days after the massacre perpetrated at the Marjory Stoneman Douglas Institute in Parkland (southeast Florida), by the alumnus Nikolas Cruz, 19, who killed 17 people with an assault rifle AR- fifteen.
The application, in general lines, will collect newsletters, news, and information about threats and security problems.