Sun Sentinel Palm Beach Edition
Schools plan new security system
Broward County grant application includes $621K high-tech cameras
The next time you step onto a Broward County school campus, the video camera may be able to watch and remember your movements.
The Broward County School District plans to install a $621,000 surveillance system that includes technology that can recognize people.
“These cameras’ artificial intelligence recognizes the movements and characteristics of people and vehicles, bringing actionable activity to the attention of those monitoring the cameras,” the district and Broward County government wrote in an
application for a federal grant.
School District spokeswoman Kathy Koch said the cameras won’t include facial-recognition technology, which has been criticized by privacy advocates who worry about the government knowing who everyone is by their video images.
“In order to provide facial recognition, additional hardware would have to have been purchased,” she said. “Facial recognition is not part of the district’s planned implementation.”
Fulton County schools used Avigilon, the same vendor as Broward County, and officials there praised the system in a promotional video for the company.
“Being able to find a needle in a haystack for investigative purposes always serves to our advantage,” Shannon Flounnery, executive director of safety and security for Fulton County schools, said in the video. He said the equipment also provides “the opportunity to look and observe things that may appear to be abnormal” and the ability to “determine who may be around on our campuses who may not have a particular reason for being there."
The video talks about using “appearance search” technology, where it could, for example, recognize that a student wore a black backpack and red shirt and let officials easily retrace the student’s path in a school building based on what he wore.
Koch couldn’t elaborate about how the cameras would recognize people in Broward, other than to say it may look at other characteristics.
“Characteristics of people can be arms, legs, hands, feet, torsos, heads, etc. — things that identify the shape the camera sees moving as a person,” she said.
The 116 new cameras are planned for 36 schools, mostly high schools “with the highest security needs,” according to a project description. They will be used to monitor the perimeter of schools, Koch said.
Although the names of schools aren’t listed, one is expected to be Marjory Stoneman Douglas High, where a former student shot 34 people on Feb. 14, leaving 17 of them dead.
Beefing up security
The school district has been looking for ways to enhance security since the massacre. A few school districts across the country already have started using such technology.
Experts say they don’t know of any other schools in Florida using it.
The U.S. Department of Justice has approved a $466,000 grant for the camera system, with Broward schools paying for the remaining $155,000. The grant also requires the approval of the Broward County Commission, which plans to consider it at a meeting on Tuesday. The School Board will vote on it at an upcoming meeting.
“This will be essential in helping to improve our security measures, to track who belongs and quickly alerting who does not belong on campus,” said Broward School Board member Lori Alhadeff, whose daughter Alyssa was killed at Stoneman Douglas.
The grant allows Broward County government, which is independent of the school district, to audit how the district’s use of the federal grant money.
“I will be insisting that our auditor goes in and audits the project to make sure the cameras and system are purchased, installed and being used as contemplated,” said County Commissioner Michael Udine, who represents the Parkland and Coral Springs area.
The school district said the decision to pursue the technology came after discussions with a security consulting firm it hired as well as discussions from the state’s Marjory Stoneman Douglas Public Safety Commission, which reviewed what went wrong during the tragedy and has made recommendations to improve school safety.
The district has already made some major upgrades. Broward used to have systems that only each individual school could monitor, but the district completed a project in June that connects camera systems at all schools and allows them to be monitored remotely.
‘Many unanswered questions’
Such surveillance plans have raised alarms for some civil liberties advocates.
“There are so many unanswered questions when technology outpaces the law,” said Michelle Morton, juvenile justice policy coordinator for the Florida office of the American Civil Liberties Union. “Schools have been focusing on hardening, but school climate is a much higher indicator of school violence.
“Kids who don’t feel safe and respected are more likely to act out and get in trouble and less likely to go to adults with information.”
Kenneth Trump, a Cleveland based school security consultant, said the “devil is in the details” when it comes to whether he thinks schools should use the surveillance cameras.
“What data — faces, cars, license plates, etc. — get put into the system for the camera to pull up if it detects an individual, car, or other image? What is the criteria for entering such information? Is it objective or subjective criteria? Who decides? How long will it be retained in the database? When will it be deleted from the system? Is there a board policy set on all of this and upon what current case law is it based?” he asked.
He also questions whose job it will be to monitor the system and whether it will be a full-time job or one of many duties.
“If the details of implementation are not well thought out on the frontend, school leaders risk finding themselves with little more than ‘security theater’ rather than useful tools that will be a meaningful part of a broader comprehensive school safety program,” Trump said.
Max Schachter, whose son Alex was killed at Stoneman Douglas, said he likes the idea of the technology. But he questioned why the district is doing this before completing more urgent priorities, such as policies on emergency lockdown procedures, safe spaces for students to hide and active shooter training for school security monitors.
He said right now, the district doesn't even have an agreement that allows law enforcement to review the camera footage.
“Most of the time cameras are just forensics unless you have a very advanced school security system and have the staff to be able to take advantage of the camera’s capabilities,” Schachter said.