School shootings prompt more states to fund digital maps for first responders

When a motion detector went off overnight at Kromrey Middle School, a police dispatcher called up a digital map of the building, pinpointed the detector, clicked on a live feed from the nearest camera and relayed the intruder’s location to responding police.

Within moments, they captured the culprit: a teenager, dressed in dark clothes and a ski mask but carrying no weapon.

The map and cameras “let the dispatcher keep things from becoming super-escalated,” said the school’s security director, Jim Blodgett. “The dispatcher could see that it looked like a student… just kind of goofing around in the building.”

Spurred by mass shootings, thousands of school districts have hired companies to produce detailed digital maps that can help police, firefighters and medical professionals respond more quickly in emergencies.

The Middleton-Cross Plains Area School District, where the teenage trespasser entered from a roof hatch, was an early adopter in Wisconsin, which has since provided mapping grants to about 200 districts.

More than 20 states have enacted or proposed digital school mapping measures in the past few years, according to an Associated Press analysis aided by the bill-tracking software Plural. Florida approved $14 million in grants last year. Michigan allotted $12.5 million. New Jersey allocated $12.3 million in federal pandemic relief funds to complete digital maps of every school in the state.

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