The ability to talk the same language, while having the same map in front of them, is now a requirement under House Bill 301, which the School District of Lee County already implemented prior to the bill being passed as another layer of protection in schoolhouses.

“Critical incidents are often chaotic and ever changing. Having the ability to quickly know where first responders are — and where they need to go — can save a life when every second counts,” said Sheriff Carmine Marceno in a prepared statement.

Critical Response Group Chief Operating Officer Alex Carney said the school safety mapping originated from the military special operation community. He said when you think about oversees, operating somewhere in the Middle East, or Iraq, military special operation units are forced to go to villages, places, or towns they have never been before every night.

Carney said the challenge was figuring out how to communicate.

The simple concept, the grided reference graphic, was developed as a template on how they could communicate with each other in new places. The graphic would include an overhead imagery of places with a grid overlayed of such things as buildings and intersections.

“Everyone that is going to support an operation got the same map. It didn’t matter if you were flying a helicopter, jet, jumping off the back of a helicopter,” Carney said.

They all talked the same language about a site regardless of the military unit and experience.

“The technique has been used in probably tens of thousands of operations over the last 20 years. It was required in a special operations community,” he said. “The technique is in the military community and unifies people in different military services, agencies, communicating common language about a place.”

With House Bill 301 becoming law, Carney said a lot of the features of how they plan and communicate using maps was adopted on how to plan and communicate during a school safety event.

“The concept of what the bill is trying to solve is how do you make sure accurate maps that are usable for communicating during a school safety event, are distributed and accessible to the public safety community,” he said. “It mandates it is accessible to public safety agencies at the city, county, state and federal level in the software platforms they are already using.”

Situations can stretch on over hours and, if everyone is talking over the same map, things can be done faster while making better decisions because everyone is talking the same language, he said.

“How is that law enforcement officer communicating where he or she is, where the threat is, causalities located, safe for ambulance and medical services to enter the building,” Carney said. “It’s complex things that require police, fire, EMS, 911 professionals to communicate over hours.”

The legislation was passed in the spring and $14 million in grant funding was associated for schools to meet the mandate. Critical Response Group was involved because they had done a lot of mapping in Florida prior to the bill.

Lee, Collier, Charlotte, Hendry, Seminole, St. Johns and Highlands included the safety school mapping in their district prior to the bill being passed. Now the remaining districts in Florida are required to work with a vendor to get maps done to meet the requirements of the bill.

Carney personally worked on the maps for the School District of Lee County.

“It’s a big district and multiple law enforcement agencies. Lee County Sheriff, Fort Myers Police, Cape Coral Police Department, Sanibel, multiple EMS and fire agencies. Two or three 911 centers in Lee County that dispatch and answer calls for different agencies,” he said. “It’s a complex situation.”

That complexity, for example, could be one that falls on the border of two different jurisdictions, as both agencies may have different software and technology platforms, but need to be looking at the same map.

To ensure that to happen, it requires human beings walking through the buildings to make sure a room is indeed that room.

“Making sure year after year updated maps are accessible to multiple law enforcement agencies and other agencies,” he said. “In our experience about a year seems to be fair. Schools tend to make changes at the end of the year before the start of the year.”

Lee County Sherriff’s Office Lt. Todd Olmer said the Critical Response Group mapping began implementation in 2020 and as the mapping and capabilities grew, the program was expanded.

“The mapping gives all parties — deputies, pilots, incident command, etc., a Common Operating Picture (COP). For schools, having a layout that is specifically intended for making entry and navigating quickly is instrumental in getting care where it is needed as efficiently as possible,” he said.

Olmer said the lessons learned from the unfortunate and horrific events of past mass casualty events led the Sheriff’s Office to see the benefits that the Critical Response Group system provides.

“Large campuses to rural areas present obstacles in orienteering and locating locations or each other,” Olmer said. “The CRG systems help mitigate these issues efficiently and in a platform that is common and easily understood. In scenario training the benefits were immediately seen in schools directing resources to and from locations, and when doing table-top exercises to train from a patrol level to an incident command.”

He said during Hurricane Ian the system was used during recovery efforts and could be quickly understood by the incredible amount of assistance they were receiving from other agencies and departments.

“This helped streamline communication,” Olmer said.

As a former special operation officer in the Marine Corps, Carner said it is always a stressful operation to try to communicate with different people in a place you have never been before.

“No matter how sophisticated technology gets and tools you get, if you don’t have a radio that talks to people, or a map then you are instantly going to fail as a commander, in my opinion,” Carner said. “To be successful as an incident commander, you have to have the guts to step up and take charge, radio to talk to people and a map that everyone can gather around to communicate the common language. You have to have those three ingredients to be successful in the chose of an emergency and really help and solve problems.”