Broward’s troubled 911 system among issues discussed at MSD Public Safety Commission meeting
The Marjory Stoneman Douglas Public Safety Commission met on Wednesday to discuss some on-ongoing safety issues still plaguing schools from threat management to the embattled 911 communications system.
Law enforcement, school officials and Parkland families all participated in the meeting held in Sunrise.
Tony Montalto, who lost his daughter in the MSD shooting, urged the commission to get the safety issues fixed.
“We’re almost five years past the murder of my beautiful daughter Gina, her 13 classmates and three teachers, we need to get this fixed,” said Montalto.
One of the major topics was the 911 communication system between Parkland, Coral Springs and the Broward Sherriff’s Office.
Max Schachter, who also lost his son in the MSD shooting, insisted that communication problems have been highlighted as a major flaw in the wake of the deadly shooting.
“One of the issues during the shooting was that coral springs and BSO did not have each other on the radio channels, so they couldn’t even get on the channels to talk to each other,” said Schachter.
There’s been an ongoing back-and-forth debate as to who should run Broward’s 911 system.
Currently, the system is jointly operated by the BSO and the county government and BSO wants to run the system entirely.
“The law enforcement, the ones consuming and using 911 don’t have jurisdiction and have to go to the county to get approval for everything and have to go through the committee after committee—It’s just nonsense,” Schachter said.
Pinellas County Sheriff and Chair MSD Commission Bob Gualtieri also discussed threat management and how more work needs to be done.
“It’s the single greatest opportunity at doing what we all want and that is to prevent the next school shooting,” said Gualtieri.
Gualtieri also expressed how imperative it is to have a statewide system keeping track of problematic students.
