Apalachee High School security alert technology may have saved lives. How does it work?

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Law enforcement officials in Barrow County have praised new technology in Barrow County schools for enabling a swift response to the shooting earlier this month at Apalachee High School. That Crisis Alert System created by Atlanta-based Centegix includes a wearable badge with a button that when pressed summons security. And other schools in Georgia are using this technology as well. Tony Lockard is Gwinnett County Schools Chief of Police. He spoke with GPB’s Peter Biello about this technology.

Peter Biello: So, schools in Gwinnett County use these badges which are made by a company called Centegix. Can you tell me a little bit about what stood out to you about this company system when you selected it?

Tony Lockard What we were looking at was the timeliness of the responses, that it actually populates to the administration or district level individuals or our officers receiving the alerts. Also the functionality. how a user friendly is it, and so forth. And also getting feedback again from our faculty and staff.

Peter Biello: Tell us more about how it works. It's a wearable badge for teachers and staff, not for students. What happens when they press the button or how does the button work?

Tony Lockard Correct. So the way the technology works is it's a badge. If you think of something the size of a credit card and it can be on the lanyard around your neck and a little sleeve or free floating, not in a sleeve. Some faculty and staff prefer to have it possibly on their hand with a little retractable lanyard that's on the hip. So what happens inside Gwinnett County Public Schools? We use it for two different options. The first option is staff assistance, where it could be a medical emergency. It could be a classroom disruption, something like that. I'll use this example. You could have a teacher that goes to use the restroom and walks into a public restroom at the school and finds a student lying on the ground, possibly experiencing a seizure or something like that. They can push the button on the badge three times, and we say it's a "three button push," which is indicative of "I need help." One, two, three. "I need help." And then what will happen inside the small little send an alert that that three button push will hit one of the beacons that very close proximity, like in the bathroom. It'll hit the beacon. It'll send a signal to individuals designated inside each school. This is commonly administrators and school nurse and also the school resource officers. They'll get an alert. It'll pop up in a couple different locations. It'll do a desktop take-over. So they're sitting at their laptop or desktop computer, it'll send them an alert on their computer saying teacher Tony Lockard is in bathroom number three on the first floor is asking for staff assistance.

Peter Biello:  So, not only does it send an alert, but it actually sends location information. So you have instant information about what's happening and where in the school that is happening?

Tony Lockard That is correct, Peter. It actually sends a like a map overlay of the school letting us know where that sensor is hitting. And then if the administrator is not at their desktop, if they're out walking around in the school, it'll also send them an alert to their phone. So then they also have multiple ways of receiving that alert and then they can respond to that situation like a medical emergency or a disruption that's happening or something like that. And then 99% of them were for staff alerts or things like that, a medical emergency, classroom disruption, I need assistance with something.

Peter Biello: And can you tell us a little bit about how the Centegix system would enable teachers and staff to call for a lockdown?

Tony Lockard It's basically a force multiplier. And I'll use that same scenario. A teacher, a staff member walking into the parking lot and they possibly see some suspicious activity. It could be that they see an individual taking a gun out of a car. They do an eight button push. It'll automatically put the school into a hard lockdown. And inside what will happen, the beacons, they will turn red. They'll start almost like a police light, like a red light circling a strobe. And then also what we've integrated is with our P.A. system. So it'll make an announcement, and it'll say hard lockdown, hard lockdown, secure your classroom doors and so forth. The same verbiage. And we have standardized verbiage for all of our schools. So it'll indicate a hard lockdown. Again, it's a force multiplier. We don't want a teacher, if they see something suspicious, have to, " let me get my cell phone and call 911" or "Do I call the front office? Do I call the principal?" It's additional eyes and ears in all of our schools that help keep our schools safe.

Peter Biello: I see. How do teachers and students report feel about these wearable badges, this vintage wearable badges? Do they say how they feel? How it makes them feel?

Tony Lockard Yeah. Great question, because we do have to take have to take that into consideration. We don't want to just implement a product or a technology or a safety protocol, something that we like and not take into consideration what is the feedback going to be from faculty, staff and students? But no, we've had very, very positive feedback from faculty that have used it and students and so forth.

Peter Biello: What else is your school district doing to ensure student safety?

Tony Lockard With school safety, it's not just one item. What we do is we have like a three-pronged approach that we would that we operate from. So the first one is prevention and that is keeping that a good school climate. What is the feel of the school? And having certain things in place: PBIs positive behavior interventions. And this is students that have good behavior, positive behavior, crediting [...] crediting them for that. You know, good, good behavior. What is the school climate doing surveys to see what the feel inside the school is and so forth, maintaining good communication with our parents and everything, and then still going into more prevention. Having our officers in the schools and so forth. And the thing that we work on is to triad model with our officers. And that involves think of a triangle with three equal sides, one side being law enforcement, but the other side is mentoring and teaching. One thing that we really emphasize: mentoring, teaching classes and building relationships with students, having that ability to communicate with them so that if they hear something— because a lot of times our students hear things before us being the faculty staff don't hear things. Another thing: getting out and reading at the elementary schools. And then collaborating with our local partners. In Gwinnett County. We have a phenomenal relationship with Gwinnett County Police, Gwinnett County Sheriff's Department and the local municipalities. So if something happens, we can reach out to them.

And I'll give you this. Wednesday morning after the Apalachee High School shooting took place, about 15 minutes right after it happened, I received a call from a major over at Gwinnett County Police, and he said "Hey, Tony, we're going to increase our patrols at all of your schools" and then communicated with all the local partners. And they said, "Yep, will increase our patrols to help you" and then to even expand that, working with GBI, GEMA (Georgia Emergency Management), and then even on a national level, FBI working with them and communicating with us, if they receive any kind of threats. They're pushing information to us and so forth.

Then the other prong that we look at is protection mitigation. That goes into the cameras that we have in place; the visitor management system reacts to ring the doorbell to be allowed access into a school. We also have vestibules where now you don't come into a school in you have access to the entire school. Now you have to kind of wait in an area and it's determined if you go past a second set of doors to go into the interior, that school that you're just there to check out your child for a doctor's appointment. We're going to have you have you wait in that waiting area, vestibule area. You're there to meet with a staff member. Then we'll be giving you access further into the school.

Another thing that we rolled out last year and have had phenomenal success with is our app-based tipline. So anyone inside Gwinnett County public schools, students, faculty, staff, parents, community members, really anywhere, anyone, even you, Peter, you could go to the App Store and download its GCPS Tips. You download that app, and you have the ability to report a whole variety of things to our dispatch center.

And the good thing is we have it in 20 different languages, so you can go in there, submit a tip, it could be, say "alcohol related," and you submit a tip. It goes to our dispatch center, which is staffed 24-7-365. We can have instantaneous contact with you. It can remain anonymous. Or you can say, "Hey, my name is Peter, here's my phone number." You can submit videos, pictures with it. You know, “Hey, here's a picture of some kids drinking alcohol out of their car on Friday night before a game. And this is a picture of their car and their tag” and so forth.

We have the Raptor visitor management system, which we run our visitors through, and it checks the National Sex Offender Registry.

So then after that, what we do is we go in to respond and recover. If an incident does happen, we have to be prepared to respond and recover. Where are we going to evacuate to? How are we going to get communication out to the parents? Because, you know, being a father, being a grandfather, if there's a need to evacuate a school, that there's an emergency at a school, I'm going to be at a heightened anxiety level. If I get communication from the school and it says, "Hey, Mr. Lockard, your son Tony is safe. He's on the bus going to our reunification site." Okay, my anxiety level is going to come down. "Hey, Mr. Lockard. We want to let you know that Tony, your son has arrived at the reunification site, and you can come up and check him out." Now, that has helped my anxiety level as a parent or grandparent. Now I know, okay, my child is safe and so forth. So that just to give you a brief overview, you know, again, our three-prong approach, what we do to help with school safety.

Peter Biello: So it seems like there's a variety of things that Gwinnett County Schools is doing to keep kids safe. Let me ask you, because even given all those things that the school system does, things happen, right? You can't be 100% safe all of the time. Do you worry maybe not just as a police chief, but as a parent and grandparent about kids’ ability to stay focused on their education and feel safe given everything that happens in schools now?

Tony Lockard Yeah, it is true, Peter. We are in a totally different climate. What I grew up in school environment-wise, probably what you did is totally different [than] what our children are exposed to now. Coming off of Apalachee, [and] prior to that, Uvalde, we had the incident up in Nashville...so we do. We have to be cognizant of: "How do we keep our keep our schools safe and secure?" And that they're reaching their main objective, and that's to teach our children for our children to learn, but yet still keep it open and inviting. And the mental awareness issue—that is at the forefront right now, what the faculty, staff, students and parents are experiencing out in Apalachee. I have no idea what the mental trauma, the PTSD going back into that school and so forth. Those are topics issues that definitely have to be addressed. And we can't say, well, just get over it, let's just keep moving forward and so forth. We're doing a disservice if we don't consider those objectives also.