KISSIMMEE, – The Osceola County Sheriff and Osceola Superintendent held a news conference on Wednesday to show parents how they plan to keep students, faculty and staff safe this school year.
The Osceola County Sheriff’s Office held several active shooter trainings over the last week leading up to the start of school.
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“I can assure you that if something like that happens, here in Osceola County, my deputies are going to go in — confronting the gunman right away,” said Osceola County Sheriff, Marcos Lopez.
Lopez said the training is about more than active shooter drills. It also includes educating deputies on new technology like artificial intelligence software that’s able to detect a weapon.
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“Gun detection is important,” Lopez said. “We’ve been trying it out. Not a lot of schools are using it as artificial intelligence. We tried it out at the fair, and I want to say we had about a 93-94% detection rate, and most of it was law enforcement officers just walking in and that’s really good.”
Osceola County’s Superintendent Dr. Mark Shanoff said on the school district’s side, they have communication systems in place to make sure families are made aware of school emergencies.
“One would be the Blackboard system, which is the automated call-out,” Shanoff said. “And we want to make sure that parents receive information in as real-time as possible.”
Osceola County Schools start on Aug. 10.
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