Parents Protest Plan to Put Armed Drones in School to Combat Violence: ‘Technology Is Unproven’

A new program that puts drones with non-lethal offensive capabilities in a Colorado school to protect students from active shooters has sparked concern from parents.

John Adams Academy in Douglas County, Colorado, will be the first in the state to use the services of Texas-based company Campus Guardian Angel, which offers schools small drones that it can deploy during a confirmed active shooter situation, piloted by its drone experts at a command center in Austin, Texas, according to its website.

In addition to claiming they can live-stream video to law enforcement in real time, the drones are outfitted with speakers so the pilots can communicate with the shooters or civilians on the scene. They also have sirens and air poppers to create distracting noises and are equipped with pepper ball launchers that can shoot and potentially blind a suspect. As a last resort, the drones can simply ram an active shooter with surprising force, as demonstrated in a video from Inside Edition.

While Campus Guardian Angel boasts that these drones can provide a first response to an active shooter faster than law enforcement or a school resource officer, parents aren’t so sure given that they’ve never actually been tested in a real active shooter situation.

“What about a drone spewing these pellets and hurting a kid?” Douglas County parent Jennifer Iversen said to CBS News. “It brings in so many ethical and legal issues that I just think it’s a really bad idea.”

“This company has the drones in other schools, but they don’t have any data about their use,” fellow parent, Julie Ort told the outlet. “I think that that technology is unproven, and I think school security is really important, and we shouldn’t be using our kids as test sites.”

Ort also made the point that a drone pilot in Austin might not be able to differentiate between a shooter, an armed school resource officer and law enforcement and could therefore potentially interfere with law enforcement during a dangerous situation.

John Adams Academy is a charter school that takes public money, which Iversen argued makes it incumbent upon the school district to give parents a say in this program, per CBS News.

While the drone program will be the first of its kind in Colorado, Campus Guardian Angel has previously been deployed in about 10 schools across the country, including in three schools in Florida, according to the outlet. However, none of these locations have had an active shooter situation, so there’s no concrete data on the drones’ effectiveness.