SUNRISE, Fla. – The Marjory Stoneman Douglas Public Safety Commission met in Sunrise Tuesday to discuss a number of school safety issues, from the school guardian program to the Broward County 911 system.
The MSD Public Safety Commission was established during the state’s 2018 legislative session to identify and address issues raised in the wake of the February 2018 mass shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland.
Tuesday’s meeting took place amid the shooter’s death penalty trial.
“I want to be with them, you know, I miss being with them,” Max Schachter, who lost his son, Alex, in the shooting, said. “But I have to be here. This is really important that that we make sure this never happens again.”
Schachter sits on the commission.
Communications problems have been highlighted as a major flaw in the wake of the shooting and an ongoing back-and-forth over who should run Broward’s 911 system made its way into Tuesday’s meeting.
Currently, the system is jointly operated by the Broward Sheriff’s Office and the county government.
Sheriff Gregory Tony wants his agency to run the system entirely.
“(We) cannot get past the bureaucratic structure of government that exists with two different entities and non-elected officials on one side, a single elected sheriff and then a county administrator,” Tony said Tuesday. “It didn’t work that way in the past. This organization has managed communications, handled it effectively, had built it. There was a transition into a regional program, so to speak.”
But a singular unified system is still up in the air. The commission said a unified system is also needed across the state addressing threat assessment and management.
“We’re gonna form three subcommittees of the MSD commission,” Schachter said. “It’s gonna be one on active shooter preparedness after what happened in Uvalde. We’re going to do a subcommittee on school safety incident data that is being reported and also we’re gonna do a subcommittee on threat assessments.”