With the mission to end school shootings, communications engineer David Gray has built a product that works like a conference call, which lets all first responders in an emergency active school shooter situation communicate and coordinate with each other on one technology platform.
The platform allows for the safe routing of medical personnel, assistance with safe evacuations, and to quickly direct police to an active shooter at a school, Gray said.
He said with all emergency responders on the same platform, it would eliminate miscommunication and improve response time.
In a recent episode of Bay Area Innovators, he said his technology called “Safe Schoolz” would give each teacher a button that can be pressed in an emergency situation. It would instantly create a conference call in which every first responder and school administrator would be alerted and would be able to see what’s happening in every classroom, hallway, and courtyard that has a camera.
The security platform could be connected with existing one-way security cameras and bi-directional cameras that are added to the classrooms. Also, each classroom would be equipped with a computer tablet for communication during the emergency situation.
Additionally, the emergency call could be triggered by the sound of a gunshot or by AI identifying guns on camera, Gray said.
“It’s going to make it very difficult for anybody to do anything wrong inside of a classroom because everything is going to be captured,” he said. “It’s a game-changer.”
Gray said he was horrified by the school shooting that happened in Uvalde, Texas. If his technology is implemented, he believes it can prevent situations like that from happening again.
“Imagine if those officers could see [the Uvalde school shooter] come across that campus, track his movements, identify which doors were open and locked. They could see inside the halls. They could see inside the classroom. How different would that have been? That’s really the question I ask people, is how different it would have been if you had eyes everywhere instantly,” he said.
Gray said he has worked in television and video for over four decades and has witnessed tragedies firsthand while capturing footage for TV news stations in the Los Angeles area.
He said that on one of his assignments in Palm Springs, he was asked to capture video of an incident where a bus of Girl Scouts had gone over a cliff.
“When I got there it was horrific,” he said. “There were seven killed, and I still see this little girl’s face. I still see her. It was absolute chaos.”
He said the chaos and miscommunications of the emergency response during that event were rampant and disturbing.
When he was involved in getting helicopter footage for fires, he noticed that the sheriffs deputies, the police, and the fire department were unable to communicate with each other.
“They’re on different radios with different frequencies with different codes, so one can’t talk to the other,” he said.
With all his firsthand experience seeing a communication gap during emergency situations, Gray was really affected by it. Then a turning point came when he heard a report of another school shooting.
“It just ripped my heart out,” he said.
He said that the little girl’s face from the bus incident came flashing back to him.
He said he was set to go buy a boat and sail the Caribbean with his wife, but he felt like he couldn’t live with himself if he did that, so he changed course and put his life savings into creating his emergency technology platform.
He said he has invested about $1,6 million in “Safe Schoolz.”
Gray said he sees it as his life’s purpose to do everything he can to make sure that children are protected.
“This is my life. This is what I’m here for,” he said.
He said he was offered money for his platform at the beginning, but he turned it down because it’s not about the money to him; it’s about making the world a better, safer place for children, teachers, and first responders.
In addition to helping with school shootings, his technology can protect teachers and other students from other types of violence happening on school campuses, he said.
He said that he received pushback from a teachers union representative who was concerned about the privacy of teachers, but after a demonstration of “Safe Schoolz” in action, the person understood that the teacher is in control.
Gray believes that his technological solution to school shootings is bipartisan. He said it addresses the problem while protecting the Second Amendment rights of Americans. He also said that it could be rolled out immediately with no political debate or changes to legislation.
He mentioned that his granddaughter asked him for a bulletproof backpack for her ninth birthday.
He said she knows nothing about what he does or about his “Safe Schoolz” platform, but she knows that she is afraid of becoming a victim of a school shooting.
“I think we have a whole generation of kids that are growing up with that. That’s their normal now, and we have to stop it,” he said.
