On February 14, 2018, students spotted an armed gunman loading an AR-15 rifle in a stairwell moments before opening fire at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Florida. The student fled the building and alerted the first adult he encountered, a football coach, who took him to a nearby baseball field to wait while the coach investigated. The shooting began before the coach returned to the building.
It’s exactly the kind of delays that Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD) officials hope LASAR, an anonymous reporting app, can prevent in life-or-death emergencies. And they’re encouraged by what they’ve seen so far.
Describing the app Thursday at the California IT Education Conference in Sacramento, Lt. Nina Vranasombati of the Los Angeles School Police Department said the idea was a group effort. In the wake of the tragedy at Marjory Stoneman Douglas, the district created a Safe Schools Task Force made up of parents, teachers, administrators, faculty, and law enforcement who meet quarterly to conduct school We discussed ways to make it safer.
āThey developed indicators to track policy progress and effectiveness, create strategies, improve existing policies, and recommend new programs,ā she said. “One of her new programs was her LASAR. This is how the idea for her LASAR was born.”
Vranasombati said the app was funded by a grant secured by LAUSD’s Information Technology Services (ITS) division, was built by district-controlled safety technology company Kokomo 24/7, and is owned and operated by her division. It was officially released in March.
Alfonzo Webb, LAUSD’s senior director of school operations, said LASAR’s communications plan includes Blackboard Connect, PSA videos, poster boards, sliders on the district website, social media posts, and emails to families and employees. , the story in the podcast Los Angeles Daily News.
To submit a report through the free app, you must select the type of incident, specify the location and provide details, said Douglas Le, LAUSD’s senior ITS administrator. You have the option to attach a photo or video, remain anonymous, or leave your contact information. Reports are sent directly to the Watch Commander’s office via text and email alerts. If it turns out to be a school-wide emergency, school staff and everyone using the app will be automatically notified.
“Once we receive the information, we will triage the situation and determine what type of response is required,” Vranasombati said. āYou donāt necessarily get a police response.ā
She said her department has received 591 reports since March, most of which came outside school hours. Only 14% of these incidents required a police response, and 60% were responded to by school staff.
Although LASAR has been downloaded 6,886 times to date, representing just a fraction of the district’s more than 570,000 students, Vranasombati shared several examples where LASAR may have saved lives. . In one case, an unknown person used his LASAR to report a student with a knife. Due to the detailed description and location, officers located and arrested the student, confiscated the weapon, and learned that he had brought it in in anticipation of a fight with another student.
She contrasted this with other incidents that are far less likely to be reported in a timely manner, such as the one LASAR is trying to prevent. A student sent a direct message to the school’s Instagram account with a photo of an AK-47 rifle with the caption, “Should I bring it to school?” ‘ was not read for three days. The school forwarded the message to law enforcement, who spent 19 hours investigating, visiting the student’s home and arresting the father on suspicion of improperly storing a firearm.
Vranasombati said mitigating these threats requires tools that provide timely reporting, actionable information and anonymity.
“[Students] I want to tell them, but they don’t want to make it public. They have no intention of going to the tip, or going to the teacher, and prefer to remain anonymous. So we used that as a call to action, and it worked. We got tips, got everyone involved, and it worked out well,ā she said. āShe has been in place for less than a year and has been working great for us.ā