As the FBI and state and local investigators continue to sift through evidence in the Apalachee High School mass shooting, the implementation of panic alarm technology just a week ago is being credited for getting law enforcement to the scene quickly.
Barrow County Sheriff Jud Smith said teachers at the high school had Centegix badges, equipment and software that allowed them to notify authorities of a threat in their building.
Alyssa's Law mandates that public elementary and secondary school buildings be equipped with silent panic alarms that notify law enforcement. The law is in various stages of being adopted in U.S. states, with seven states passing legislation and nine others in progress, according to Make Our Schools Safe, a national non-profit organization dedicated to protecting students and teachers at school.
Georgia lawmakers introduced Alyssa’s Law legislation last year in the Senate and it was approved, but further action appears to be stalled in the House. About 60% of Georgia schools have contracts with Centegix, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported.
“This could have been way worse,” Smith said during a news conference. “Both SROs were actively looking, they had an alert. When the shooting began, they interacted with shooter and he gave up immediately.”
Colt Gray, 14, has been charged with 4 counts of felony murder for the killings of two students and two teachers at the school: students Mason Schermerhorn, 14, and Christian Angulo, 14, and teachers Richard Aspinwall, 39, and Christina Irimie, 53.
Georgia Bureau of Investigation Chris Hosey said Gray used an AR-style weapon during the massacre. But the agency hasn’t discussed how Gray accessed the weapon or managed to get into the school with one.
However, the FBI revealed that in May 2023 that its National Threat Operations Center received several anonymous tips about online threats to commit a school shooting at an unidentified location and time. The online threats contained photographs of guns.
The FBI determined the online post originated in Georgia and the FBI's Atlanta Field Office referred the information to the Jackson County Sheriff's Office for action. The sheriff’s office interviewed Gray and his father, and the father said he had hunting guns in the house, but the subject did not have unsupervised access to them, the FBI said.
Gray denied making the threats online, and the sheriff’s office alerted local schools for continued monitoring of Gray. At that time, “there was no probable cause for arrest or to take any additional law enforcement action on the local, state, or federal levels,” the FBI said.
Hosey said there is no evidence there were any additional shooters, or a list of schools being targeted as had been reported earlier. There have been contacts between the Georgia Department of Human Services and the family that are being reviewed, he added.
When asked what could be done to prevent further school shootings in the state, Gov. George Kemp said “we’ve done a tremendous amount on school safety” but said he didn’t want to get into political discussions after such a tragedy.
Hosey said “community involvement with the local school system,” is crucial. “We’ve got to take action within our own communities, take care of each other, be aware of our surroundings and what’s going on in our community,” he said.
A report from the National Association of School Statistics compares the adoption of school safe and security measures at public schools between the 2009-10 and 2021-22 school years. The number of districts providing an electronic notification system for schoolwide emergencies increased from 63% in 2009 to 69% in 2021.
Districts providing a “structured anonymous threat reporting system” increased from 36% to 62% over the same period, the report said. Two-way radios, security cameras and controlled access also made large gains in adoption.
Media reports have suggested Gray left the classroom and later tried to come back in, but the doors were locked and those inside the classroom could see Gray had a gun – so he went into another classroom that was open.
The locked classroom doors, in addition to the panic alert system, appeared to have lessened the impact of the shooting, Jake Parker, Senior Director of Government Relations for the Security Industry Association. Guidelines from the Partner Alliance for Safer Schools (PASS) suggest classroom doors be shut and locked when class is going on, as well as have a duress alarm system.
Parker said SIA recently supported a bill in California that expands standards and requirements for classroom and interior doors and locks to any school buildings undergoing construction renovations, retrofitting, repairs, alterations, rehabilitation, or additions.
This change was due to the majority of California school buildings being more than 25 years old and not having doors with locking mechanisms meeting basic security criteria. The bill is headed to Gov. Gavin Newsome for consideration.
There could be many reasons, Parker said, for Alyssa’s Law being adopted so slowly by states – although funding could be a major part of it.
For many years, SIA has been advocating for federal grants to supplement state and local spending on security. There have been some efforts under the Stop School Violence Act (2018) and Bipartisan Safer Communities Act (2022), but Parker said such programs are woefully underfunded.
“It should be the goal to make sure schools are the safest place. Your kid is outside your home, and they should at least be as safe as places we go to for entertainment,” Parker said. “The last couple of sports games I went to I went through weapons detection technologies. It was super easy. It’s not cheap, but you're basically safer at a baseball game than you are in a school, from a weapons detection standpoint. So that really shouldn't be.”
