An active shooting threat is not an unfamiliar situation for law enforcement veteran Edward McGovern.
The former police commander was among the police, fire and emergency medical responders on scene at the Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International Airport mass shooting in 2017, which resulted in six deaths. At the time, he said he was struck by the poor communication between the first responders at the location of the attack. It was difficult to get updated details about the status of the threat and share information between the different agencies.
He had the same thought a year later, when he responded to the attack at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, the deadliest high school shooting in U.S. history with 17 fatalities.
"The whole thing was being managed with a notepad, a dry erase marker and a radio," McGovern said. "It hit me that our communication was bad and it was costing lives."
That was the beginning of what became CERA (Critical Event Response Applications), a security technology startup headquartered in Fort Lauderdale. McGovern came up with the concept not long after the airport shooting and then made it his full-time focus after retiring from the Hallandale Beach Police Department in 2020. The management system connects police and medical responders with teachers, students and other citizens during active shooting situations to help give law enforcement a live overview of the situation.
In the event of an active shooting, teachers and students could use the CERA app from their phone to notify police without having to call 911. From there, the system immediately shares the alert with other teachers, administrators and law enforcement agencies. CERA also enables users to report the location and description of the suspect, which is then plotted on a digital map that can be seen by police.
All of that is designed to ensure law enforcement can contain the threat and medical responders can treat the injured as quickly as possible.
"We can take a situation that would usually take 20 minutes to respond to and knock it down to six minutes," McGovern said.
Most police departments are still fairly low-tech, McGovern said. Many still rely on two-way radios to communicate at emergency scenes, which gets chaotic when multiple agencies respond to an event. And most agencies do not have a way to access visual displays to actually see what is happening in real-time during an attack.
"I think a lot of people have an image of the police they see on TV, who always have a host of technology available at their finger tips," McGovern said. "That isn't reality."
That's especially relevant in the wake of the May 24 elementary school shooting in Uvalde, Texas that left 21 people dead and 17 injured. The law enforcement response to the incident has been heavily criticized after reporting revealed police waited more than hour before confronting the shooter. The New York Times reported the commander at the scene of the shooting did not have a police radio with him, the first of a series of communication breakdowns during the attack.
"The amount of time it took police to engage [the shooter] was excessive," McGovern said. "I'm not sure what the final investigation will reveal, but we have to look at how communication played a role in the response – and the response failures."
It's been a busy year for CERA since the app's official launch in January. The company is already bringing its technology to the Davie police and fire departments, and is in discussion with other law enforcements agencies and schools in the tri-county area. And in March, CERA entered the event space when it handled security at the Ultra Music Festival in Miami. The startup aims to partner with more concerts and festivals to improve safety at those events.
There could be a sizable market for CERA in the U.S., home to more mass shootings than any other country in the world. According to the Gun Violence Archive, there have been at least 246 mass shootings – defined as events in which at least four people are shot or killed – so far in 2022.
"Our central customers are police and fire, but [the app] can be used by schools, shopping malls, stadiums, religious facilities – we're prepared to assist any target for attack," McGovern said.
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