Behind metal detectors and a small group of guards who hardly looked up as people filed in, the room was located beneath the U.S. Capitol. Inside, executives, lawmakers, and lobbyists discussed a problem that no one in the nation has been able to solve while leaning over coffee cups. mass shootings at schools. It had an odd atmosphere, halfway between a wake and a sales floor.
Noel Glacer was also present. The day a gunman entered Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School and killed seventeen people, his son Jake was seated in a psychology class. Even now, Glacer’s voice has the flat steadiness of someone who has told the tale too many times when he talks about that morning. “If you think this cannot happen to you, I’m here to tell you I used to think the same exact thing,” he replied. Although statistics indicate that school shootings are still, thankfully, uncommon, a parent who experienced one usually wins every argument.
The Security Industry Association’s roundtable served as a tiny window into a bigger picture. Thanks to federal grants, nervous superintendents, and a constant drumbeat of tragedies that keep the sales pipeline full, school security in America has quietly grown into a multibillion dollar industry. You can see what the money can buy by exploring the trade show floors: facial recognition cameras, automated locks, gunshot detection systems, and software that searches teenagers’ social media accounts for red flags. There are moments when it seems like something from a Bond movie. There are moments when it seems more like theater.
Every shooting, including Parkland, Santa Fe, Sandy Hook, and Columbine, adds fuel to the industry. Vendors are no longer required to pursue educators. They are pursued by the teachers. Kenneth Trump, who only has a surname in common with the former president and owns a school safety consulting business, stated it plainly. He claimed that the environment is “ripe for exploitation.” He takes care to clarify that, in his opinion, these businesses are not bad. They’re not. However, because they are opportunistic and focused on making money, the slower, more difficult discussions about mental health and firearms are lost in the haste to harden buildings.
Some of this equipment may actually save lives. Police response times can be shortened by using digital floor plans, similar to those used in counterterrorism raids. Even before a 911 call is received, gunshot sensors taken from military programs can identify the location of gunfire. Following Parkland and Santa Fe, the Critical Response Group—founded by a former Marines special operations officer—saw an increase in inquiries. He claimed that the phones continued to ring. Schools seem to be purchasing first and then checking to see if it works.
That is precisely what a 2015 RAND study discovered: districts purchasing technology in good faith with virtually no proof that it prevents anything. Officials were met by researchers who were “in desperate need of more evidence on what works.” Some of the products were sensible and modest. Others, the report cautioned, might make students feel more like they were under siege than secure. Observing this from the outside, it’s difficult to ignore the subtle absurdity of a Massachusetts middle school spending seventy thousand dollars on a system that has never been activated, funded primarily by grants that the superintendent acknowledges he stole.
Guy Grace, who oversees security at Colorado’s Littleton Public Schools, recalls the early hours of April 20, 1999. His pager went off while he was lifting weights at the gym. A few miles away was Columbine. He claimed that the job was never the same after that day. It hasn’t been. Nobody is quite sure yet whether the solution is a thousand cameras or something more subdued and difficult to market. Meanwhile, the industry continues to expand.
