Armed guards, weapon-detection systems, and increased surveillance haven’t seemed to slow down school shooting tragedies. Can quick-response drones controlled by remote pilots succeed where other methods to thwart active shooters have failed? Schools in Florida, Georgia, and Colorado are betting they can. Whether or not that’s the case remains to be seen, but the deployment of Campus Guardian Angel drones has raised new legal uncertainty over liability, student rights, and possible invasion of privacy.
Florida’s state legislature allocated over $550,000 last year to install Mithril Defense’s tactical anti-shooter drones in three of the state’s high schools, with Deltona High School in Volusia County being outfitted this summer. The Sunshine State has already committed more funds for the Florida Department of Education’s pilot program for the upcoming school year. Five Georgia high schools are slated to receive the pepper spray-armed drones for approximately half a million dollars, with exact locations yet to be determined. A K-12 public charter school in Colorado has self-funded to become the first campus west of the Rockies that will boast security drones to ensure school safety. But will the potential cure prove more harmful than the disease?
The belief that the non-lethal drones will be able to react to school shooters within seconds and immediately neutralize the threat appeals to many, but others question if the focus on reacting to a threat after it happens wouldn’t be better served by prevention through tightening laws on semi-automatic long guns that are commonly used in massacres. There’s also concern that a student or a member of law enforcement being accidentally injured or worse by a drone’s non-lethal measures isn’t a matter of if, but when. It also raises questions over who could be held liable.
Guardian Angels, or Nazgûl?
Since 1999’s attack at Columbine High School, it’s believed that roughly 400,000 students have experienced some form of gun violence while at school. Massacres at places like Sandy Hook Elementary School and Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School have provided an inexhaustible source of conflict between gun owners asserting Second Amendment protections and gun control advocates demanding safeguards and guidelines.
According to Justin Marston, the CEO of Mithril, he got the idea for employing drones in schools after it took law enforcement over an hour to stop the shooter in Uvalde, Texas, in 2022. The Campus Guardian Angel drones are installed in storage boxes on ceilings that include charging pads. Teachers can alert the system to a threat through a phone app or by a panic button installed in each room. When an alarm is triggered, the drone pilot in the Campus Guardian Angel tactical operations center releases a drone that uses a connection to the school’s wifi to access the surveillance system.
According to Mithril, the drone will be ready to respond in 15 seconds or less. Controlled by its human operator, it can employ sirens, blinding strobe lights, pepper gel, or smash into a threatening person at speeds of up to sixty miles per hour. It also has a lance for smashing through windows. There was allegedly discussion of including tasers and pellet guns as well, but the school declined to give permission over concerns of public safety and the wrong person being hit. Although tested extensively by Mithril, the Campus Guardian Angel drone system has yet to encounter a live shooting situation.
Linked to the School’s WiFi? What Could Possibly Go Wrong?
The drones may prove to be deterrents, an effective counterstrike method, or both. There’s also the very real possibility that a student, first responder, or law enforcement officer could be mistakenly targeted during a false alarm or in the heat of battle. If a minor suffers the impact from a six-pound drone smashing into them at 60 miles per hour, who gets held liable?
As in loco parentis, schools and educators hold a duty of care to provide a safe environment for the children who attend. This responsibility is constantly updated by new laws that attempt to protect against threats as they appear. These include the Gun-Free Schools Act (GFSA) of 1994 and the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School Public Safety Act. If school districts fail to take steps to assess and prevent potential threats, they might open themselves up to liability. But how much of that responsibility is reasonable to assign?
For lawsuits against schools, plaintiffs must show that the district's negligent behavior caused the victim's injuries. Since the system wouldn’t have been in place without approval and funding, does that mean a teenager injured by a Campus Guardian Angel drone has a strong case, or will the school have the same sort of qualified immunity that police possess? Conversely, could someone wounded by a shooter in a school without drones argue that their injuries were a foreseeable outcome of the district's negligence?
Drone installation in schools may raise privacy questions as well. If a drone released during a false alarm records a student breaking either the student code or an actual law, is that footage usable proof or a violation of a student’s rights? Given that Florida intends to survey parents of students in schools with drones about their views after they’ve been installed, pertinent answers may come a little too late. There’s also the danger that the drone network could be hacked, giving others access to what they see.
In a perfect world, school shooters would vanish, and Mithril’s drones would never have to be deployed. However, it seems inevitable that their effectiveness will be tested at some point. If that happens, we’ll also learn how the legal system will react.
