State seeks to fortify schools with new app

Students and teachers might soon have an easier way to document and report suspicious activity to local law-enforcement officials.

As part of the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School Public Safety Act approved by Florida Gov. Rick Scott March 9, the state allocated $400,000 toward the development of a mobile suspicious activity reporting tool.

The app, planned to be released to the public this fall, takes its cue from similar mobile applications launched in other states that have received positive results, said Trey Stapleton, the Director of Public Affairs of the Florida Attorney General’s office.

“Basically, it'll be an app that allows students to anonymously, or confidentially if they want, provide some information and report suspicious activity,” Stapleton said. “The information would then go directly to FDLE and local law enforcement and depending on how we set it up, it might go to the schools as well.”

The hope is that the app, dubbed FortifyFL, will streamline the process of reporting suspicious behavior and prevent more students from becoming school-shooting victims.

“We started to look for a way we could streamline the process, and there are other states making apps similar to what we're doing,” Stapleton said. “I think the first to do it was Colorado after Columbine. They've really been the leaders on this and there's a couple of states that have copied their model.”

Colorado’s app Safe2Tel is meant to stop violent school incidents, planned attacks and prevent suicides. It provides students, parents, and community members a way to report information. All reports are handled by trained dispatchers from the state’s patrol and relayed to a team of school officials and law-enforcement officers for further investigation. 

According to CBS Denver, Colorado’s app has prevented hundreds of planned attacks and suicides since its launch in 2014. The state's success provided the Florida Attorney General's office hope that a similar app also could offer benefits in Florida, Stapleton said. 

Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi’s office now has taken the lead on the project and is working in partnership with the Florida Department of Law Enforcement and the state’s Department of Education. Negotiations with potential companies for development of the app are in play and a competitive bid process will follow shortly after, Stapleton said. 

“As far as how it's going to work, and the features it'll have – we're still trying to hash that out because there has to be a bidding process for this particular initiative,” Stapleton said. “So we're going through that right now. Once we go through the negotiation process and the bidding process, we'll have more information on how exactly the app will work … but we’re confident it’ll be successful and help us save some folks.”