Preventing Mass Violence: Art of the Possible, or Failure of Imagination?

When I woke up on July 4th and set out to celebrate Independence Day, my professional bio read husband, father, technologist, and cancer survivor. Three of those were by choice. One was not. While I sipped my morning coffee, another unwanted descriptor was added to my bio — survivor of a mass shooting.

My day began by driving a few miles from my home to Highland Park, IL, and dropping my teenage son off at the parade staging area. Like his father, he is passionate about politics and was marching alongside our state representative. After dropping him off, I walked down the parade route to the local Starbucks to grab some breakfast. That is where the chaos began for me. At 10:15 AM, as the parade kicked off, a crowd rushed towards the Starbucks door in a panic, screaming, "There is a shooter! Lock the doors!" Seconds later, I found myself barricaded in the restroom with a group of strangers. With everyone panicked, the tech guy inside of me kicked in.

To my son and his twin sister's chagrin, our family has a location tracking app on our iPhones. It powers our IoT home automation and lets me keep tabs on them as I send them out alone into the world. As I texted him furiously, I was simultaneously able to see on the app that he had taken shelter in the train station near the parade staging area. Feeling exposed, he and a group of legislative interns then bravely ran and sought refuge from a family that opened the doors to their home just up the road. I watched a storyline often depicted in war dramas unfold in real-time as a pin with my kids' photo on my iPhone.

As this was all taking place, it was believed that the gunman was attempting to enter the rear of the Starbucks, and I found myself running out the front door and towards my son's location. As I moved cautiously, tracking his movements online, I could see that he was safe, but I was left exposed out in the open. I then dived behind a hedge where I hid, continuing to text him until I felt it was okay to make my way to my car parked only a few blocks away. Then I drove to his location.

Frustrated, furious, but safe at home

Once we returned home, I posted about the ordeal on social media. The comment I made about using a location tracking app (something as a technologist I can't imagine not having) was picked up in London by the BBC and later Good Morning Britain.

People were interested in how technology could keep themselves and their loved ones safe in times of horror and chaos.

Today I am told that I am a victim. I hate that word. I may be a victim of one of the many mass shootings that have become commonplace in our country. But I am not just some technology geek who found himself on a morning talk show as one of many victims of a senseless act of violence, talking about an app.

We are just scratching the surface of public safety technology

I am the Chief Technology Officer for the United States Public Sector accounts at one of the largest IT consultancies in the world. It is my colleagues who build and deploy these types of public safety apps. Our team also manages school social media monitoring programs and has documented proof of the multiple mass casualty events that we have played a role in stopping. My colleagues lead Smart Cities programs that use IoT devices and Artificial Intelligence to identify potential threats and alert authorities. My team is working on a technology solution that looks past government data silos to identify children who might be in danger before it is too late. In the wake of another recent shooting, I am the guy who was brought into meetings with state officials to discuss how these technologies can be expanded to keep more kids safe.

Now, I sit and watch the press conferences in the aftermath of this horrific event in Highland Park, IL. With each subsequent broadcast, we learn about the gunman and how all the signs that this guy was a threat were clear; that is where my anger sets in. The anger that I am a victim of a senseless act that might have been avoided had the proper, readily available technology been in place to alert the authorities of this person's intentions.

We can do so much more with what we have

As the investigation evolved, we first learned about the prolific social media presence of the shooter. He had posted photos and videos of himself depicting acts of violence. The image that gets me is the one the media outlets keep showing of the shooter in a school, wearing tactical gear with a gun. It angers me because I know that the technology exists to have aggregated this data and alerted the authorities that this individual is a potential threat and he needed to be investigated. It angers me because this technology is not in place in my community.

Having met with countless officials on this topic, I know that the idea of using technologies that enable social media monitoring and AI for public safety is a charged subject and very likely to fill my comment feed below. As a technologist who implements these solutions, I know that there is no breach of privacy that comes from these lifesaving technologies. These tools do not invade personal privacies. They do not track private posts like the ones my kids send to their friends hundreds of times per day. They follow the public posts across multiple social media sites and aggregate this data to alert authorities to images and texts that threaten to shoot up a school or a community event. They track the public posts that any of us can see if we type the right words into the search bar of our own social accounts. They follow the manifestos made public — a common attribute of these mass murders — that the authorities show on television in the aftermath of these horrific events. ?

The dangers of disconnected data

As someone who works daily with data scientists, I am further angered when police — during a press conference revealed they interfaced with the perpetrator of this heinous act on two separate occasions in 2019. Once when he attempted suicide, and again when a family member reported he made extreme threats. Three years ago, the Highland Park Police removed 16 knives, a dagger, and a sword from his home. According to NBC 5 Chicago, Sgt. Christopher Covelli said that, while no arrests were made, "The Highland Park Police Department, however, did immediately notify the Illinois State Police of the incident," during that news conference. The State Police had a record of this individual's mental illness and weapons had been removed from the home, but they could not retrieve this data when it mattered.

As a tech guy working to solve the breakdown of data silos in government, this infuriates me because it is not that the data wasn't available. It is that it was not readily and automatically accessible when only a few months after this intervention, the gunman applied for and was granted a Firearms Owners Identification Card (FOID) and later passed four separate background checks allowing him to buy weapons, including the one he turned on the crowd, dispensing more than 80 rounds of ammunition.?

The time to act is now

As a father, I sit and wonder when I will feel safe sending my teenagers back out into the world alone. As a technologist, I am left wondering how IT professionals like me can do more to help our government clients expand the lifesaving public safety technologies that only a few communities have accomplished so far. With recent advancements in artificial intelligence and machine learning, coupled with enabling technologies such as 5G, it is now possible for schools and local communities to monitor and act on potential threats in real-time before senseless acts of mass violence take place. In the wake of the 2017 mass shooting in Las Vegas, the city became a pioneer in using these smart technologies to keep residents and visitors safe. After the Parkland shooting, the state of Florida passed groundbreaking legislation mandating social media monitoring programs in schools.

Since the start of 2022, our nation has seen an unprecedented number of mass shootings — from Buffalo to Uvalde to Tulsa — and now to Highland Park. The past five years have seen more mass shootings than in the prior 50 as they have become an epidemic in our country. And today, I strongly believe that communities nationwide must take advantage of implementing lifesaving technologies that use data to thwart potential threats.?More to come on how technology, legislation and government policy changes will work together in keeping our communities safe.