4 January 19-25, 2023 dallasobserver.com DALLAS OBSERVER Classified | MusiC | dish | Culture | unfair Park | Contents Outrunning the Guns Technology developed in North Texas uses sensors, cameras and LED lights to help students and faculty escape when shooting starts. BY KELLY DEARMORE W ith school shootings having become almost commonplace in the United States, school districts and law en- forcement agencies have continued to search for ways to prevent them. A new technologi- cal program designed to assist faculty in the event of an active shooter takes the focus away from stopping the shooter by physically removing students and teachers away from the shooter as efficiently as possible. “How do we stop the shooter is a great question for the police to ask,” says Ernie Williams, CEO of Farmers Branch-based Go- to-Green, who introduced its namesake pro- gram with the Pilot Point Independent School district recently. “But as a parent, my concern is more about if the people inside the school know how to get our kids to safety.” Using security cameras integrated with sensors that pick up not only the sound of a gun firing, but the bullet’s path when it is fired by sensing its ballistic pressure, Go-to- Green’s chief feature is an overhead LED lighting system that provides what Pilot Point ISD Police Chief Brad Merritt calls “the pathway to safety.” It’s one of the more innovative new approaches to school safety since last year’s Robb Elementary shooting in Uvalde, when 21 people were murdered. Williams says this multi-pronged pro- gram is the first of its kind anywhere, and that Pilot Point ISD is the first entity to em- ploy it. The program was developed and demonstrated for nearly two years inside the vacant Collin Creek Mall in Plano prior to the mall’s being torn down for redevelop- ment. Williams and Merritt first discussed the Go-to-Green system about four years ago when Merritt was an officer with the Frisco Police Department and Williams was living in Dubai while keeping up with the news in the states. Williams, a retired Marine with 23 years of service, had read about the Run. Hide. Fight. active shooter survival method, a widely cir- culated safety protocol developed in Texas. He felt it missed the mark by being too gen- eral and leaving too much to chance. He thought about how some of the students dur- ing the Columbine High School massacre of 1999 reportedly ran toward the two shooters, not away from them. Williams decided a sys- tem offering visual cues for students and fac- ulty to follow would likely be more effective because when frightened or excited, people tend to have their eyes wide open. Go-to-Green can work with a school’s current security camera system and oper- ates in a realm that’s uncomfortable for many, although it’s an all too realistic one. This technology isn’t going to stop the wrong people from getting guns, and it’s only indirectly going to keep an assailant from entering a school. (Sensors can be placed on doors to lock them if a gunshot is detected in a school’s parking lot). It’s al- most as if Go-to-Green is a resource for the inevitability of a school shooting, not for the possibility of it. “I get asked all the time ‘What can we do to stop school shootings?’” Merritt says. “And I understand why people want to pre- vent shootings from happening to begin with, of course, but I don’t think we can pre- vent a school shooting from happening if someone truly has the desire to do it. We can lock schools up like Fort Knox, and if some- one wants to get into a school and start shooting bad enough, they’re going to do it. We have to be ready to mitigate the scenario and take care of the situation as soon as pos- sible once it does happen.” Should a shooter be reported on a cam- pus with Go-to-Green, the idea is that teachers and students will be able to simply follow green lights down a hall, into a room or out a door to safety, or stay where they are if a red light is displayed. Blinking strobe lights will alert first responders to where the shooter is in a given moment be- cause, Merritt says, the school’s integrated camera system will “triangulate on the shooter to track him.” Go-to-Green isn’t intended to be an all- encompassing shooter safety solution. Mer- ritt says it should be used as “an additional resource” along with a school’s safety train- ing, drills and even armed guardian and re- source officer programs. In addition to the sensors, camera and LED lighting system, a Go-to-Green opera- tions center is manned by off-duty police and trained military veterans who will be in contact with involved authorities as the shooting is occurring. Williams says that since introducing the program, he has re- ceived calls from “universities, government agencies, school districts and municipalities in Utah, California, South Carolina, Georgia and Florida inquiring about Go-to-Green.” Williams says he’s “Second Amendment agnostic,” and that Go-to-Green is only about safety, and not about whether some- one should have a gun. For his part, when a school shooting is happening, the politics of the moment aren’t what matters. “There needs to be a paradigm shift,” he says. “As a whole, we have to change how ev- erybody is worried about the shooter. We can tell the police where the shooter is, but that doesn’t get our kids to safety by itself. This process isn’t really about cameras or even about how the police respond, but about get- ting people away from the gunshots.” ▼ CITY HALL THE GOOD MOTHER DIMPLE JACKSON STREET WILL HONOR A SOUTH DALLAS ‘NEIGHBORHOOD MATRIARCH.’ BY KELLY DEARMORE D imple Jackson lived on Audrey Street in Dallas’ Dixon Circle neighbor- hood for more than 50 years. When she died in 2019 at the age of 93, the street lost its guiding light, the woman her son Robert Jackson calls “the neighborhood ma- triarch.” Soon the street she called home for five decades will be named after her. Last week the Dallas City Council voted to approve the name change, giving Dixon Circle residents a new reminder of how vital it is to be a good neighbor. That’s what Dim- ple Jackson was, according to her son. As the second of six children, the first five of whom were boys, Robert Jackson says his mother was “a devoted Christian, a servant of God. Anytime she could do something good to help someone, she would.” Dimple Jackson also raised three of her grandsons. “She had a special gift for raising boys to become respectable young men, that was one of her claims to fame,” Robert Jackson said with a slight chuckle. “Once we were all adults, she would tell anybody that she met that she had raised eight boys and none of them ever went to jail. She would tell every- body that.” Dimple Jackson’s influence and kindness went far beyond her own children and the tiny two-bedroom house she lived in. It was her selfless efforts in community outreach that made her worthy of having the street named after her, her family says. For more than 70 years, Dimple Jackson attended Faith Tabernacle Church of God in Christ in Dallas, where she engaged with those around her. From fixing Sunday supper for the home- less, to knitting scarves and hats for families who lived in shelters and volunteering at a local nursing home, Dimple Jackson made time for as many people as she could. “She was such a lovable person, and she just knew how to treat people,” her son says. “She knew how to communicate. She pro- vided counseling to people who were having issues and disputes. She knew how to calm the nerves of people who were upset and troubled.” She also found time to serve as an elec- tions volunteer and deputy registrar. And even after working the long hours of her job as a private housekeeper and staying as in- volved in the community as she could, Rob- ert Jackson says his mother always “gave us the attention we needed as children.” Current Dixon Circle residents are glad to have their neighborhood bear the name of one of their own. There have been troubles with drugs and gun violence there, but plenty of neighbors have refused to give up hope they can make things better. Dr. Pa- mela Grayson is one of them, and to her the street’s new name is about more than switching a sign. In a presentation to the City Council, Grayson noted that naming it Dimple Jackson Street is a form of what is de- scribed as “landscape reparations.” Gray- son picked up on that concept when she worked with the group that helped change the name of part of Lamar Street to Bo- tham Jean Boulevard in 2021 to honor the man killed by off-duty Dallas police offi- cer Amber Guyger in 2018. As the director of the social justice group Collective Activism, Grayson will soon begin work on a new neighborhood education and literacy center located at the corner of Dixon Avenue and soon-to-be Dimple Jack- son Street. She’s excited about what the kids in her neighborhood will see when they look up at the corner. Joe Raedle/Getty Images A new technology developed in North Texas aims to help students and teachers in the event of a school shooting. | UNFAIR PARK | >> p6