2021-02-24

Florida Department of Education Selects Motorola Solutions and SaferWatch for Statewide Mobile Panic Alert System

Source: The Critical Communications Review | Gert Jan Wolf editor

The Florida Department of Education (DOE) announced it selected Motorola Solutions (NYSE: MSI) as a preferred provider for the deployment of a statewide mobile panic alert system for Florida’s K-12 schools.

To deliver the solution, Motorola Solutions teamed up with SaferWatch to offer a cutting-edge safety application that connects school districts directly with law enforcement in Florida. The DOE ranked it as the top technical solution offered amongst its selected vendors.

“Motorola Solutions and SaferWatch have developed a proven product to help keep students and faculty safer," said Tony Montalto, President of Stand with Parkland. “This is another layer in the school safety system that is being revamped in the wake of the Parkland school massacre three years ago. Speeding up critical response times during an emergency is vital, and I am pleased to see a statewide effort to implement mobile panic alert systems in Florida’s K-12 schools.”­

This solution meets the criteria of Alyssa’s Law, which requires every public and charter school in the state to implement a mobile panic alert system connected to a public safety answering point (PSAP) and first responders.

“The Motorola Solutions and SaferWatch solution was implemented in Broward County, where it covers more than 440 schools, 850 houses of worship, the Broward County Courthouse, Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International Airport, and Port Everglades,” said Broward County Sheriff Gregory Tony. “This solution provides critical information to public safety officials for emergencies that require a rapid response, and it has led our investigators to look into threats of possible school shootings. I’m proud the Florida Department of Education has selected a technology that the Broward Sheriff’s Office has already implemented as part of its statewide mobile panic alert system."

Motorola Solutions provides integrated safe schools solutions that combine video security and analytics, command center software and critical communications to help schools secure their campus perimeters, control access to buildings, quickly communicate with local law enforcement and increase operational efficiency. Motorola Solutions’ safe schools solutions can be customized to meet a school’s or county’s unique needs and spans the end-to-end workflow for everyday operations and emergencies.

SaferWatch provides mobile and wireless panic buttons that can be assigned to school staff and administrators, government officials, businesses, and used at large-scale events. When initiating SaferWatch’s panic button, public safety emergency operation centers are immediately notified of the situation. Alerts and detailed information including user profile, location coordinates and supporting videos or pictures are aggregated in Motorola Solutions’ CommandCentral Aware software, which provides 9-1-1 operators and first responders en route to an emergency with real-time intelligence and a unified operational view of events. To ensure law enforcement has detailed information about school building, IntraLogic Solutions will be providing school districts with an option to build custom floor plan maps.